specific object / david platzker
presents
Robert Barry : Closed Gallery Redux
an exhibition to be held at Specific Object
June 13 - September 9, 2011
Specific Object / David Platzker is pleased to announce the opening of the exhibition Robert Barry :
Closed Gallery Redux. The exhibition will be presented at Specific Object from June 13 through September 9, 2011. This show recreates three seminal exhibitions by Barry presented originally in 1969 in Los Angeles at Eugenia Butler (March 10 - 21); in Amsterdam at Art & Project (December 17 - 31), and in Torino at Galleria Sperone (December 30).
For exhibition at Art & Project, and for the presentation at Specific Object, the announcement card served as the sole physical manifestation of the artwork, on which the following statement is printed:
During the exhibition the gallery will be closed.
While the cards for the presentation at Galleria Sperone read: “For the exhibition the gallery will be closed,” and at Eugenia Butler: “THE GALLERY WILL BE CLOSED.”
My method of presentation is that I sort of start first of all with the idea of no presentation. And then I say, well, the next step, what is the least amount of presentation that I can get away with?(1) -- Robert Barry, 1969
As with many artists of his generation including Lawrence Weiner, Douglas Huebler, and Joseph Kosuth, Barry challenged himself in the mid 1960s to create work that transcended physical presentation and the idea that art must be captured within a confined “art” context such as a commercial gallery or a museum structure. His
Inert Gas and
Telepathic works were direct precursors to his
Gallery Closed piece, which itself is now in the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.
During the exhibition at Specific Object the gallery will be closed.
Specific Object is located at 601 West 26th Street / Floor 2M / Room M285, New York City. Telephone (212) 242-6253.
Specific Object's website is www.specificobject.com
For additional information regarding the exhibition or Specific Object please email David Platzker at
[email protected]
References:
(1) Robert Barry in interview with Patricia Norvell, in Recording Conceptual Art, University of California Press, pp. 90 – 91.
Anthony Haden-Guest, "A New Art-World Legend: Good-by Bob & Ethel: Hullo, Dorothy and Herb!," New York Magazine, April 28, 1975, pp. 46 - 48.
Anthony Haden-Guest, "The New Queen of the Art Scene : Mary Boone's Champagne-under-pressure Technique Shakes up SoHo," New York Magazine, April 19, 1982, pp. 24.
Some places to which we can come : Robert Barry, Works 1963 to 1975, Kunsthalle Nürnberg / Aargauer Kunsthaus Aarau / Kerber Verlag, 2003, pp. 31, 73, 80, 103, 107.
John T. Paoletti, Ruth Fine, Dorothy and Herbert Vogel,
From Minimal to Conceptual Art : Works from The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection, National Gallery of Art, 1994, pp. 40 - 42, 64 - 65, 130.
Extra Art : A Survey of Artists' Ephemera 1960 - 1999, CCA / Smart Art Press, pp. 62 -63.
Anne Rorimer,
New Art in the 60s and 70s : Redefining Reality, Thames & Hudson, 2001, pp. 87, 247.
Anne Rorimer in Reconsidering The Object of Art : 1965 – 1975, MIT Press, 1995, pp. 70.
Robert Barry in interview with Mathieu Copeland, in Voids, JRP Ringier, 2009, pp. 79 - 91.
"Robert Barry : Conceptual Radio," interview between Robert Barry and Peter Eleey, in Flash Art, July - September 2011, pp. 80 - 83.
Read the The New York Observer review of the exhibition at:
www.observer.com/2011/07/gallery-what-gallery-robert-barry-masterpiece-reprised-in-new-york/
Read Andrew Russeth's "Group Show War: Galleries Really Want You to Come to Their Summer Exhibitions" in The New York Observer review of the exhibition:
www.observer.com/2011/07/group-show-war-galleries-really-want-you-to-come-to-their-summer-exhibitions
and:
http://www.observer.com/2011/07/summer-is-a-time-for-art-books/
