Lawrence Weiner

 

Marian Goodman Gallery New York is pleased to present an exhibition by Lawrence Weiner, INHERENT INNATE TENSION opening March 1st and on view through April 22nd. 

 

Lawrence Weiner’s structures have defined his art as ‘the relationship of human beings to objects and objects to objects in relation to human beings’. Taking this as a cornerstone of his practice, Weiner’s body of work has at its core a fundamental questioning of the conventions of objecthood in relation to the producer and its viewer. His early work incorporated actions, paintings, cut-out sculptures, reliefs and objects.  

 

In the late 1960s Weiner began formulating new parameters for his work, seeking to transform its practice and reception through the use of the universally common availability of language. In 1968 he made public his Statement of Intent. Positing that the linguistic creation of a work of art was enough for his work to exist, the statement read: 

 

1. The artist may construct the work.

2. The work may be fabricated.

3. The work need not be built.

Each being equal and consistent with the intent of the artist, the decision as to condition rests with the receiver upon the occasion of receivership

 

Weiner’s endlessly adaptive representations of the relationships of material components, their processes and states, together with his interpretation of spatial and structural constructions have been in evidence ever since. Over the past five decades in the public realm and in countless cultural milieux, his work has sought to circumvent restrictions that bind one object to a fixed point in space and time. Insisting on multiple interpretations and common, accessible systems of distribution and presentation, based on the open-ended and infinite variations inherent in language, he has redefined the nature of material and sculptural processes. 

 

“Art is still about the communication of one human being’s observations to another human being with the intent of bringing about a change of state.” 
-- Lawrence Weiner 

 

Lawrence Weiner was born in 1942 in New York. His work is currently on view at the Milwaukee Art Museum through April 2, and at the Perez Art Museum Miami through May 28. A commission for BAMPFA/ Berkeley Art Museum Pacific Film Archive opens on March 1 and will be on view through October 1, 2017. 

 

Recent solo exhibitions have been held at Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria and Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation, Vienna (both 2016); Blenheim Art Foundation, Oxford, UK (2015); South London Gallery (2014); Villa Panza, Varese, Italy and Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Spain (both 2013). A major retrospective survey was shown at the Whitney Museum, New York and traveled to MoCA, Los Angeles, and K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf (2007-2009). 

 

Group exhibitions in 2016 and 2017 include Los Angeles to New York: Dwan Gallery 1959-1971, Los Angeles County Museum of Art and National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Take Me (I'm Yours), Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen and The Jewish Museum, New York; Time Extended: 1964-1978, Herbert Foundation, Gent, Belgium; Forty, PS1, Long Island City; 20 Bienal de Arte Paiz, Guatemala City; Drawing Dialogues: The Sol LeWitt Collection, The Drawing Center; Electronic Superhighway, Whitechapel Gallery, London; Seth Siegelaub: Beyond Conceptual Art, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Many Things Brought from One Climate to Another..., Art Gallery of Ontario; Looking at Tomorrow: Light and Language from the Panza Collection, Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo; Black Sun, Fondation Beyeler, Basel; Museum of Stones, Noguchi Museum, New York.

 

In 2015 Weiner received the Roswitha Haftmann Foundation Prize and is the recipient of the Wolf Prize for 2017. 

 

Please join us at the opening reception for the artist on Wednesday, March 1st, from 6-8 p.m.

 

For further information, please contact the Gallery at : 212 977 7160, or visit: www.mariangoodman.com