Grosvenor exhibits Quadrum (2005-2006), a four-part sculptural work composed of discrete painted elements. A low-slung brown base supports a flat blue bubble shape. Two sets of freestanding welded steel elements are placed a few feet apart from the base-and bubble composition. The sculpture recalls Albatrun (2002), another Grosvenor sculpture previously shown at Paula Cooper Gallery, in which heterogeneous but conspicuously ordinary and even cartoonish elements are put in relation with each other to create a multi-part work.

Robert Grosvenor’s art has variously been termed “enigmatic,” “eccentric,” “elliptical,” and “inexplicably compelling,” without a doubt in large part because it so gracefully eludes the received notions of what contemporary sculpture should look like. Interested since the 1960s in the articulation of space, in creating or marking spaces and interspaces through simple, abstract forms, Grosvenor is often indeed included in the exhibitions that defined the Minimalist movement, such as “Primary Structures” (Jewish Museum, 1966) and “Minimal Art” (Den Haag Gementemuseum, 1968). His work, however, demonstrates such a degree of independence and idiosyncrasy as to make this label (or any label) hardly appropriate.