Rita McBride

In her sculptures and installations, Rita McBride explores public space, architecture, and the built environment, playing with scale and materials to transform the familiar into the unexpected. Drawing on the visual language of Minimalist sculpture and Modernist architecture, McBride simultaneously alludes to and subverts their utopian aspirations and notions of technological, industrial progress. Often considering the mainstays of public space, such as parking garages, her sculptures toy with the functionalism and formalism of such structures. In 2011, she completed Mae West, a 52-meter-high carbon steel sculpture located on the Effnerplatz in Munich, among the largest sculptures ever built. McBride has been a professor of sculpture at the prestigious Kunstakademie Düsseldorf since 2003. Her work has been the subject of numerous international exhibitions, including solo shows at venues including the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) in 2012, Kunsthalle Bern in 2008, SculptureCenter in 2004, and the Wiener Secession in 2000, among many others. She has also participated in group exhibitions at institutions such as the Witte de With in Rotterdam, Moderna Museet in Stockholm, MoMA PS1, Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art, the New Museum, and the Tate Modern.