Josh Sperling Reinvents His Colorful Art Practice With Furniture

Josh Sperling’s painting-sculpture confections can often feel unbound, their candy-colored curlicues whimsically springing and twirling across white walls into interlocking doodles that form a technicolor gestalt. While the Ithaca-based artist has spent the past decade methodically mastering his craft behind making his confetti-like wall compositions, the third dimension has lately beckoned. “I’ve always loved design, especially furniture, poster design, watches, and architecture,” says Sperling, who started sketching ideas for furnishings 20 years ago, when he was still studying sculpture and ceramics at SUNY Potsdam. “It was always in my grand plan to someday transition to furniture.” 

His latest show, “Big Picture,” on view at Perrotin Los Angeles until July 3, heralds the enthusiastic arrival of his furniture practice in the United States following an international debut at Paradise Art Space in Incheon, South Korea. The exhibition’s title nods to both the calculated chaos of showbusiness—the gallery even occupies a converted theater, complete with marquee and ticket booth—and a broad-strokes evolution in Sperling’s practice into exciting new territory. Here, he translates his existing stretched-canvas shapes into functional design, namely modular benches, framed mirrors, and seating systems imbued with light-hearted poise and the rigor of minimalist paintings from the 1960s and ‘70s. 

Bulbous one- and two-seater stools, upholstered in vibrant Kvadrat and Maharam textiles, fit together in dazzling pinwheel formations like a textured color wheel. The user-friendly seats can easily stand on their own, but form a vivid composition greater than the sum of its parts when reassembled. In another room, a serpentine bench worms down a corridor like a Candyland path, its color-blocked cushions buoyed by alternating ash and walnut bases. Wood recurs on an amoeba-like mirror installation, gesturing to black-and-white Memphis lines and a seminal Isamu Noguchi artwork that assembles a large sculpture with smaller components.  

Each piece evokes the “form follows fun” directives of Memphis and the irreverence of Pierre Paulin, but Sperling insists neither were on his moodboard. (Try fashion futurist Pierre Cardin.) Though he ardently studies design history to avoid repeating the past, he’s also having fun with unfamiliar materials and processes, even if it means tackling technical hurdles like bending wood, veneering, upholstering, and scaling for the human body. “These new challenges keep me going,” he says. “We’ve ‘built’ paintings by using woodworking techniques and stretching canvas, so we’re not going into the furniture realm totally blind—we have extensive knowledge of shaping wood and fabric.”  

He also picked up some finesse from his family, who were woodworkers dating back five generations. “My father was a ceramicist, photographer, woodworker, and built most of my house,” recalls Sperling, who delighted in playing with Legos as a child. “I’ve always been surrounded by craft.” His recent embrace of wood may seem like a stylistic whiplash from the irrepressible energy of his bright colors, but it’s all in the interest of “trying something new and showing off the material,” he says. “Wood is traditional and beautiful.”  

So beautiful that Sperling plans to pivot his practice exclusively to furniture. “When I have a new idea, it’s only about furniture, so that’s a clear sign to move in that direction,” he says. “I wanted to make art because I didn’t want design’s inherent constraints.” Now that he has proven his chops, new challenges await: “The restraints that once discouraged me now feel fresh.” 

“Josh Sperling: Big Picture” will be on view at Perrotin (5036 W Pico Blvd, Los Angeles) until July 3.