Sol LeWitt: Concrete Block, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, NY

Sol LeWitt: Concrete Block
P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, NY
October 10, 1999 - January 2, 2000

P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center presents "Concrete Block," works by the American artist Sol LeWitt (b.1928), one of the main representatives of Minimalism and subsequently Conceptual art. Organized by P.S.1 director Alanna Heiss and P.S.1 senior curator Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, this exhibition maps Sol LeWitt's art-making process, from preliminary drawings, followed by precisely crafted wooden models, to completed outdoor cinder block sculptures, with one work rising more than 21 feet high.

Throughout his artistic career, Sol LeWitt’s work has explored ways in which shapes and numbers can be arranged through repetition, variation, and permutation. His art is often comprised of simple grid-like geometric forms and open modular structures designed in infinite combinations. Sol LeWitt began to design models for outdoor public sculptures in the early 1980s. In 1985, the first cement "Cube" was built in a park in Basel. Since then, interpretations of these concrete block structures have been created in various locations around the world. Sol LeWitt: Concrete Block focuses on this particular body of work with completed structures designed specifically for P.S.1’s outdoor courtyard and exhibited alongside preliminary drawings and models in the museum’s second floor gallery.

P.S.1’s outdoor galleries will feature two new outdoor "monuments." These sculptures by Sol LeWitt, both entitled "Concrete Block," are made of 8" x 8" x 16" cinder blocks, a common, inexpensive building material. The larger structure, an irregular aggregation of towers made up of 563 cinder blocks, points to the shared grounds as well as the differences that exist between sculpture and architecture. A second structure, also made of cinder blocks, will be exhibited in the small outdoor gallery neighboring its larger counterpart. 

The second floor gallery is devoted to 17 wooden models surrounded by 60 drawings on the adjoining walls. The varying geometric configurations of these models highlight Sol LeWitt’s interest in excluding a rational system of order to determine the heights of his outdoor structures, and his preference to create a system that is balanced between the logical and illogical. Keeping with the basic principles of Conceptual art, this unraveling of the different stages of art-making shifts the viewer's attention from the sole contemplation of the finished work to a more complex understanding of the thought process that lies behind it.

In an attempt to both explore the history of LeWitt's public projects and to record his long-lasting relationship with P.S.1, the artist will recreate "Crayola Square," a Crayola crayon wall drawing originally created in 1971 at the Brooklyn Bridge Event. The event was organized by P.S.1 founder and current director Alanna Heiss, and was the inaugural exhibition for the organization, The Institute for Art and Urban Resources, known today as P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center. "Crayola Square" is on view in the basement of P.S.1.

A major retrospective of Sol LeWitt’s work will open on February 18, 2000 at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and travel to New York in November, 2000, at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Elsewhere in New York, Sol Lewitt is currently showing drawings at Paula Cooper Gallery, and his wall-drawings have been included in the Museum of Modern Art’s "MoMA2000" exhibition (opening October 7) and in the second half of the Whitney’s "American Century" exhibition (open September 26).

P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center
www.ps1.org