Lawrence Weiner

Lawrence Weiner: AT THE LEVEL OF THE SEA, 2008
January 15 – February 21, 2009 
Opening Reception: Thursday, January 15, 6-8 pm 

Marian Goodman Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition by Lawrence Weiner which will open to the public on Thursday,  January 15th  and will be on view thru Saturday, February 21st, 2009.  This will be his first solo show in New York since his highly acclaimed retrospective AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE at The Whitney Museum, New York, MoCA, Los Angeles, and K21, Düsseldorf.

The exhibition will present recent sculpture in both the North and South Galleries. On view in the North Gallery will be AT THE LEVEL OF THE SEA.  

In the South Gallery (LO & BEHOLD) will be on view. This work was originally exhibited at the Wolfsonian Museum, Miami in 2006, and will be presented in New York for the first time. 

The abiding concern in Lawrence Weiner’s art is with the relationship of human beings to objects, and objects to objects in relation to human beings, within the realm of the use of universal and communal materials. From early action works to Propeller and Removal paintings of the 1960s, and from sculptural practice developed within the context of Minimal Art to language-based pieces which, since 1968, have been essential to his exploration of the infinite possibilities of expression, Weiner has produced works in a dynamic breadth of formats for over forty years.   

Sculpture using language has made possible Weiner’s commitment to making his work accessible and available to the public in many diverse forms. His work has been presented on building facades, municipal venues, streets, public commissions, site-specific installations, works on paper, multiples, editions, books, as well as film, video, records, cds, dvds, and posters.  In its democracy and accessibility it has been an essential reference for a generation of younger artists. 

Over the years, the reach of the work has been assessed and celebrated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in the U.S. and Europe, culminating most recently in the comprehensive American retrospective, AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE, which was shown at The Whitney Museum, New York and at MoCA, Los Angeles, and is just concluding its tour at K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf this January, 2009.   A one man show of his work is scheduled to open at The Power Plant, Toronto, Canada, in March 2009. 


Recent solo exhibitions and projects include:  FOREVER & A DAY / SIEMPRE Y UN DIA, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo (CAC), Málaga, Spain; THE CREST OF A WAVE, Fundació Suñol, Barcelona, Spain; the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London, England; Haus der Kunst, Munich; Tate Modern, London; Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City; The Davis Museum, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA; Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao;  and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid

Lawrence Weiner was included in the 52nd International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, 2007.  Recent group exhibitions include: Ambition d’Art, Institut d’Art Contemporain, Villeurbane, France; Order. Desire. Light. An exhibition of contemporary drawings, Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), Dublin, Ireland;  Todas as histórias, Fundação de Serralves, Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Porto, Portugal; Learn to Read Art: A History of Printed Matter, Artspeak, Vancouver; Held Together with Water, Istanbul Modern, Istanbul, Turkey;  Pleinairism, i8, Reykjavik, Iceland; This is the Gallery and the Gallery is Many Things, Birmingham, UK; The Panza Collection and Ways of Seeing: Giuseppe and Giovanna Panza, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC;  Intervention/ Decoration, Frome, Somerset, England; Magritte and Contemporary Art: The Treachery of Images, LACMA, Los Angeles;  Public Space/ Two Audiences: Work from the Annick and Anton Herbert Collection”, MACBA, Barcelona and Kunsthaus Graz; The Guggenheim: Die Sammlung” , KAH, Bonn, Germany;  Horizon, Museion, Bolzano, Italy.  His work will be seen in Re-gift, at the Swiss Institute, New York, February-April 2009; and in Embrace!, at the Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado, in March 2009. 

Surveys of Weiner’s work have been held at the Van Abbemuseum, 1976; Kunsthalle Bern, 1983;  Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 1988; and Le Nouveau Musée/Institut d'Art Contemporain, Villeurbanne, 1994. A survey exhibition of his multiples was held at Boijmans van Beunigen Museum, Rotterdam in 1996, and a survey of his printed work was shown at The New York Public Library in 1995. The Vancouver Art Gallery has maintained The Lawrence Weiner Poster Archive since 1986. It has been shown extensively in the United States and Europe, with forthcoming venues in Australia.

Lawrence Weiner was recently honored by Artist’s Space in April 2008.  He has been the recipient of the Skowhegan Medal for Painting/Conceptual Art; the Wolfgang Hahn Prize, Ludwig Museum, Cologne; John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, New York; two NEA Fellowships and the Arthur Köpcke Prize, Arthur Köpcke Memorial Fund, Copenhagen Denmark as well as receiving support for film productions from The Swiss Institute, The Netherlands Film Board, and DAAD Berlin. His public projects and commissions range from a Public Art Fund project in collaboration with Con Edison and Roman Stone that integrated an edition of 19 cast-iron manhole cover/sculptures by Weiner onto Con Edison’s New York City grid, to an intervention of the work stenciled on ancient support walls in the City of Paris in Les Tuilleries .

Please join us at the opening reception on Thursday, January 15th, from 6-8 pm.  

For further information, please contact the Gallery at: 212 977 7160.