Comme des Garçons Brings Webster’s “Copper Containing Salt II” to Its Chelsea Storefront
A spare sculpture made of copper and rock salt has quietly entered the daily choreography of shopping in Chelsea. Comme des Garçons has installed a work by Webster at its West 22nd Street store in Manhattan, positioning the fashion label’s retail space as an unlikely satellite for the Dia Art Foundation, whose Chelsea location sits directly across the street.
The piece, “Copper Containing Salt II” (2017), is composed of a single sheet of copper curled into a clean cylinder and filled to the brim with coarse rock salt. The materials, at first glance mismatched, settle into a relationship that feels both pragmatic and poetic: the copper provides the salt with a stable contour, while the salt gives the copper a purpose beyond sheen and surface, turning it into a container that reads as protective rather than merely industrial.
The installation also extends beyond Manhattan. Another salt cylinder by Webster is currently on view at DIA Beacon, creating a subtle dialogue between the boutique and the museum through shared concerns with volume, emptiness, and the physical behavior of elemental matter.
Paula Cooper, Webster’s representative, underscored the work’s place within the artist’s broader practice. “Copper Containing Salt II is an exemplary sculpture from Webster’s celebrated body of work, which is founded on shaping natural materials into simple geometric forms,” she told ARTnews.
The pairing of a high-fashion storefront with a materially restrained sculpture reflects a familiar contemporary drift: art that once lived primarily in galleries and museums increasingly appears in commercial and public-facing environments, where the audience is not necessarily seeking it out. In this case, the encounter is almost unavoidable, and the work’s clarity rewards a quick glance as much as sustained looking.
With a counterpart at DIA Beacon and a prominent placement in Chelsea, Webster’s salt-and-copper form offers a concise meditation on how simple geometry can hold complex sensations: weight and fragility, containment and exposure, utility and care.
