Richard Nonas / Robert Barry
28 May - 28 Aug 2010
RICHARD NONAS In situ Installation & Sculptures
ROBERT BARRY Recent Work
Opening Friday, May 28th 2010 from 7 to 9 pm
Galerie Sfeir-Semler Hamburg can be visited by appointment only during the summer holidays from July 15th to August 15th 2010.
please call +49-40-37519940
HAMBURG Galerie Sfeir-Semler is delighted to announce two new solo exhibitions:
RICHARD NONAS In situ Installation & Sculptures
“”Art is a way of making the word bigger...Ambiguity is what interests me . And immediacy..tension is what I want...I grab what I grab; remember what I remember: skew it and use it. And forget the rest. Or try to.” Nonas, 1998/2010
For over 40 years, the Antropologist Richard Nonas has been creating intensely physical and immediately emotional works by carving, joining, stacking, arranging, re-working and even painting his essential materials of wood and metal. Describing the origins of his art practice, he writes: “I saw that simple objects, physical things and places an ax, a mountain, a box, pieces of wood roughly stacked could convey complex human emotion in an unmediated, undivided and instantaneous way.”
For his first show with Galerie Sfeir-Semler, Nonas has installed two Insitu Sculptures in two spaces of the gallery : one in Steel , the other in Wood. The artist has grouped around these simple strongly minimal pieces, on the wall, small stacks of wood or of steel forming profoundly captivating elementary geometries, with painted surfaces peaking out from within these piles of raw materials. Out of layers and pieces, Nonas creates new wholes, new forms that reveal the artist’s deeply felt investigation into volume, weight, material, surface and the interaction, unity and poetic implications of these elements.
Based in New York, Richard Nonas (born 1936, New York) has exhibited internationally since the 1970s many of You might remember his Installation in the Gardens of the Documenta 1976- with exhibitions across the US, Europe and Asia, including one-person shows at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Socrates Sculpture Park in New York, MAMCO in Geneva, and major art galleries from New York to Tokyo. From May 15 August 22, 2010, Nonas will have a one-person exhibition at the Musée d’art moderne de Saint-Étienne Métropole called “Shoots Good, Not Straight”. For more information, please visit www.mam-st-etienne.fr.
ROBERT BARRY Recent Work
A major protagonist and pioneer of Conceptual Art, Robert Barry has been making language-based artwork since the sixties. By arranging words in lists, circles, or scattered compositions on paper, canvases, mirrors, videos, walls, windows, floors and buildings, Barry’s work has explored meaning and its various modes of communication and display. By selecting a potent set of single words, the artist provides viewers with suggestions and possibilities for the relationships between words themselves, between words and images (and words as images), and between words and viewers.
For this show of new work, Barry will present one list of words directly on the wall in silver mirrored text. A second list of words will continue from the wall onto the floor with words in various colors. Every other word in these lists is flipped upside-down, creating a kind of double-direction of meaning in which words address each other and the viewer from oscillating perspectives. Large works on canvas and on paper show words against a grey background, continuing Barry’s investigation into the rich, wordless possibilities of color paired with direct but various significations of language.
With solo shows in major venues around the world, Robert Barry has established himself as one of the foremost artists in the continuing history of Conceptual Art. His work has been included in many major public and museum shows and collections such as documenta 5,6,7, the Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, PS1 in New York, Kunstmuseum Luzern, Switzerland, Moma New York and Los Angeles and many others. Born in New York in 1936, he lives and works in Teaneck, New Jersey.
ROBERT BARRY Recent Work
Opening Friday, May 28th 2010 from 7 to 9 pm
Galerie Sfeir-Semler Hamburg can be visited by appointment only during the summer holidays from July 15th to August 15th 2010.
please call +49-40-37519940
HAMBURG Galerie Sfeir-Semler is delighted to announce two new solo exhibitions:
RICHARD NONAS In situ Installation & Sculptures
“”Art is a way of making the word bigger...Ambiguity is what interests me . And immediacy..tension is what I want...I grab what I grab; remember what I remember: skew it and use it. And forget the rest. Or try to.” Nonas, 1998/2010
For over 40 years, the Antropologist Richard Nonas has been creating intensely physical and immediately emotional works by carving, joining, stacking, arranging, re-working and even painting his essential materials of wood and metal. Describing the origins of his art practice, he writes: “I saw that simple objects, physical things and places an ax, a mountain, a box, pieces of wood roughly stacked could convey complex human emotion in an unmediated, undivided and instantaneous way.”
For his first show with Galerie Sfeir-Semler, Nonas has installed two Insitu Sculptures in two spaces of the gallery : one in Steel , the other in Wood. The artist has grouped around these simple strongly minimal pieces, on the wall, small stacks of wood or of steel forming profoundly captivating elementary geometries, with painted surfaces peaking out from within these piles of raw materials. Out of layers and pieces, Nonas creates new wholes, new forms that reveal the artist’s deeply felt investigation into volume, weight, material, surface and the interaction, unity and poetic implications of these elements.
Based in New York, Richard Nonas (born 1936, New York) has exhibited internationally since the 1970s many of You might remember his Installation in the Gardens of the Documenta 1976- with exhibitions across the US, Europe and Asia, including one-person shows at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Socrates Sculpture Park in New York, MAMCO in Geneva, and major art galleries from New York to Tokyo. From May 15 August 22, 2010, Nonas will have a one-person exhibition at the Musée d’art moderne de Saint-Étienne Métropole called “Shoots Good, Not Straight”. For more information, please visit www.mam-st-etienne.fr.
ROBERT BARRY Recent Work
A major protagonist and pioneer of Conceptual Art, Robert Barry has been making language-based artwork since the sixties. By arranging words in lists, circles, or scattered compositions on paper, canvases, mirrors, videos, walls, windows, floors and buildings, Barry’s work has explored meaning and its various modes of communication and display. By selecting a potent set of single words, the artist provides viewers with suggestions and possibilities for the relationships between words themselves, between words and images (and words as images), and between words and viewers.
For this show of new work, Barry will present one list of words directly on the wall in silver mirrored text. A second list of words will continue from the wall onto the floor with words in various colors. Every other word in these lists is flipped upside-down, creating a kind of double-direction of meaning in which words address each other and the viewer from oscillating perspectives. Large works on canvas and on paper show words against a grey background, continuing Barry’s investigation into the rich, wordless possibilities of color paired with direct but various significations of language.
With solo shows in major venues around the world, Robert Barry has established himself as one of the foremost artists in the continuing history of Conceptual Art. His work has been included in many major public and museum shows and collections such as documenta 5,6,7, the Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, PS1 in New York, Kunstmuseum Luzern, Switzerland, Moma New York and Los Angeles and many others. Born in New York in 1936, he lives and works in Teaneck, New Jersey.