X (detail), computer rendering, Liz Larner, 2013

To mark its 10th anniversary, the Nasher Sculpture Center is playing with the letter X and its Roman numeral utility. And with the announcement of the fourth public artwork that will be part of the Nasher XChange program, the museum has picked an artist who specializes in X’s.

Liz Larner has been commissioned to create a mirror-polished stainless steel sculpture – shaped like an X – that will be be placed in the courtyard of the new Edith O’Donnell Arts and Technology Building, which opens in the fall. Larner’s explored the letter before – some of her other X sculptures can been seen in the video announcing the commission above.

The Nasher has previously announced commissions for the Trinity River Audubon Center, Dallas’ Vickery Meadow neighborhood and Fish Trap Lake in West Dallas. The remaining six artworks will be unveiled over the next several weeks.

More about the Larner’s piece and its place on the UTD campus is in the new release after the jump:

DALLAS, Texas (July 23, 2013) — The Nasher Sculpture Center is pleased to reveal the plans for a newly commissioned sculpture by artist Liz Larner for The University of Texas at Dallas. The work is one of ten commissions created for the Nasher’s 10th anniversary, city-wide exhibition Nasher XChange which runs October 19, 2013 through February 16, 2014.

Liz Larner is a Los Angeles-based artist whose work has been characterized by a sustained examination into the nature of sculpture. For her Nasher XChange commission, Larner has proposed X, a mirror-polished stainless steel sculpture that will be placed in the courtyard of the new Edith O’Donnell Arts and Technology Building (ATEC), set to open in fall 2013. This sculpture, situated at the intersection of art and technology, is a complex contemporary figure and symbol of the unknown and what will be.

ATEC is a new interdisciplinary curriculum at UT Dallas that fosters collaboration at the intersection of arts and humanities, science and engineering and is a partnership between the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science and the School of Arts and Humanities.

Larner has employed a wide range of materials and working methods to create sculptures and installations that push the boundaries of fundamental aspects of three-dimensional object making such as the use of line, color and form. Her work navigates the vast and still unexplored possibilities of sculpture’s formal language, which she uses to structure a discourse that is distinctly her own. Made to be approached and re?ected upon, Larner’s work requires a negotiation of space and encourages viewers to extend their perceptions beyond the visual. Larner reminds viewers that it is as important to revere one’s embodied condition and the complex experience of the physical, as it is to embrace the conceptual pleasure of comprehending the spirit of emotion through sensate perception.

The innovative X-shape of the sculpture, described by the artist as continuing “my investigation into the open form and the use of line to create volume,” has been developed over several years and could not have been realized without the use of digital modeling technology. Larner has relied heavily on technology in the past, as with 2001, a Public Art Fund commission, that used 3-dimensional animation programs and computer modeling to create intersecting cubical and spherical forms, and a hyper-iridescent paint made up of laser-cut particles, applied in a smooth coat with automotive spraying methods. Her experience working both with and without technology intrigued faculty at UT Dallas, and made this pairing a natural ?t as the program progresses through its ?rst year.

Larner has had numerous solo exhibitions at venues such as Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland; MAK, Österreiches Museum für angewandte Kunst / Gegenwartskunst, Vienna; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Regen Projects, Los Angeles; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York; Galleri Nordanstad-Skarstedt, Stockholm; Jennifer Flay Galerie, Paris; and Galerie Peter Pakesch, Vienna.

The Nasher has also commissioned Ruben Ochoa, Rick Lowe, Ugo Rondinone, Alfredo Jaar, Vicki Meek, Charles Long, Good/Bad Art Collective, Lara Almarcegui, and Rachel Harrison to create works for Nasher XChange. Details about their works, including the locations of the installations, will be announced throughout the summer.