Lawrence Weiner
17 Mar - 17 Jun 2006
Lawrence Weiner
X Y & Z
I AM NO LOGICAL POSITIVIST I AM A GENUINE AMERICAN SOCIALIST
In the 1960s, Lawrence Weiner (born in New York in 1942) developed an artistic use of language in relationship to materials which did not require an execution of the work defined by means of language. He outlined this artistic practice, on which he has insisted until today, in a “Statement of Intent” in 1968.
For his language sculptures, he relies on structures directly connected with Logical Positivism and pictorial models of modernism. He uses a language model comparable to that of the Vienna Circle, for example, designed to exclude both transcendence and representation. The early sound poems of Dada or Russian Futurism convey a similar radical, anti-narrative, anti-transcendental and anti-representational understanding of language. Lawrence Weiner’s artistic constructions are not opposed to scholarly classification but rather derived from it by way of correspondence and dialectics.
For the exhibition “X Y & Z” in Vienna, Weiner created two new works for the wall and an artist book, all of which focus on the notion of mixture (and hierarchy). He explores mixture as a principle and opposite of hierarchy and authoritarian purity, creating a new composite whole out of different systems by combining these within a non-hierarchical order.
Christine Kintisch
© Lawrence Weiner
Plakatentwurf
Bawag Foundation
X Y & Z
I AM NO LOGICAL POSITIVIST I AM A GENUINE AMERICAN SOCIALIST
In the 1960s, Lawrence Weiner (born in New York in 1942) developed an artistic use of language in relationship to materials which did not require an execution of the work defined by means of language. He outlined this artistic practice, on which he has insisted until today, in a “Statement of Intent” in 1968.
For his language sculptures, he relies on structures directly connected with Logical Positivism and pictorial models of modernism. He uses a language model comparable to that of the Vienna Circle, for example, designed to exclude both transcendence and representation. The early sound poems of Dada or Russian Futurism convey a similar radical, anti-narrative, anti-transcendental and anti-representational understanding of language. Lawrence Weiner’s artistic constructions are not opposed to scholarly classification but rather derived from it by way of correspondence and dialectics.
For the exhibition “X Y & Z” in Vienna, Weiner created two new works for the wall and an artist book, all of which focus on the notion of mixture (and hierarchy). He explores mixture as a principle and opposite of hierarchy and authoritarian purity, creating a new composite whole out of different systems by combining these within a non-hierarchical order.
Christine Kintisch
© Lawrence Weiner
Plakatentwurf
Bawag Foundation