Liechtenstein (ots) – Barry Le Va (1941-2021) is considered an innovator of sculpture in art after 1960. The Liechtenstein Art Museum is showing the first retrospective since the death of the American artist, whose multidisciplinary work is attributed to process art or post-minimalism. Like the title In a State of Flux As already indicated, Barry Le Va expanded the concept of sculpture by breaking the closedness of the form and integrating the principle of change and instability into his work. The exhibition provides an overview of his work from the 1960s to the last groups of works and follows a common thread: the relationship between drawing and sculpture. A particular focus is on the artist’s early work.
Precision and improvisation
Barry Le Va’s installations are carried out carefully and according to precise planning, but at the same time allow chance and improvisation to become elements that determine the work. He examines actions and their cause and effect on different levels of perception, be it physical, mental or visual. He often uses materials such as felt, glass or chalk for his expansive works. The artist uses the ground as a “ground” and a field for experimentation throughout his life. The first ones scattered on the ground were created in Los Angeles as early as 1966 Distribution Pieceswith whom he appeared in a cover story in the magazine in November 1968 Artforum suddenly becomes known to a wider public.
“Drawing allows me to think”
Drawing is an essential part of Le Vas’s oeuvre. On the one hand, he sees them as part of his thought process, on the other hand, he sees them as diagrams that function similarly to scores or compositions”. In this sense, they often prepare the sculptural work; they can serve as plan views, at the same time facilitating the interpretation and Allow improvisation on site.
Crime Scene Art: On the trail of Barry Le Vas’s works
The relationship between the work of art and the audience has been of great relevance to Barry Le Va from the very beginning. Like crime scenes, his installations challenge viewers to look for clues in order to reconstruct the sequence of actions that led to them or the concept behind them. This approach underlies Le Va’s enthusiasm for the crime fiction genre: “I was fascinated by the idea of visual evidence, by the way in which Sherlock Holmes managed to reconstruct a plot from obscure visual evidence.”
Le Va’s work is enigmatic and highly complex. The first presentation without the artist present is a challenge and brings with it many questions about execution and installation. Curator Christiane Meyer-Stoll carried out intensive research in various archives for the exhibition, she explains: “We are presenting the work of the three-time documenta participant Barry Le Va with many discoveries. At the same time, the exhibition shows for the first time how one can deal with the work of a posthumous artist artist who has cultivated the process and his own form of improvisation.”
The Liechtenstein Art Museum, together with the St. Gallen Art Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, Frankfurt am Main, has key early works by Barry Le Va from the Rolf Ricke Collection. The German gallery owner, who will celebrate his 90th birthday in 2024, is one of the pioneers in the mediation of contemporary art from the USA and first exhibited the artist in Europe in 1970.
Barry Le Va was born in Long Beach, California, in 1941 and initially studied architecture and mathematics before turning to art. His extensive exhibition career, spanning over 50 years, began after his first early exhibitions in 1969 with a solo exhibition at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and ended with a long-term installation (2019-2021) at Dia: Beacon, New York, where he presented installations from the 1960s re-staged. Among other things, he was a participant in the documenta exhibitions 5, 6 and 7 (1972, 1977 and 1982).
A production by the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, curated by Christiane Meyer-Stoll.
The exhibition is composed of a three-volume publication accompanied, in which the artist himself has his say through his “notes” (statements) and through the re-publication and first-time publication of interviews.
The exhibition will be published below FruitmarketEdinburgh (October 26, 2024 – February 2, 2025) and in Museum Kurhaus Kleve (spring 2025).
Barry Le Va. In a State of Flux
26. April – 29. September 2024
OPENING
Thursday, April 25, 2024, 6 p.m
Questions & Contact:
Franziska Hilbe
+423 235 03 17 · franziska.hilbe@kunstmuseum.li
Barbara Wagner (leader)
+41 78 236 34 84 · barbara.wagner@kunstmuseum.li