Robert Morris: Seeing and Space
Castelli Gallery, New York
April 3 – June 27, 2025
Castelli Gallery presents Robert Morris: Seeing and Space. The exhibition juxtaposes two forms of work dating from the 1970s: Untitled (Walk Around), 1975, a mirror installation; and a group of eight Blind Time drawings dating from 1973 and 1976.
Robert Morris was a pioneer of Minimal art. His minimalist sculpture of the 1960s consisted of abstract objects in plywood, fiberglass, aluminum, and steel. Sitting directly on the floor, these works are blank in affect and large enough to establish a one-to-one physical encounter with the observer.
During the early 1970s the artist’s practice changed direction. One new tendency was the production of objects and installations that can be occupied and walked through. New work took various forms, including installations with mirrors. Here the virtual space of mirror reflection appears to alter or complicate the actual space of the room. Untitled (Walk Around) was the first installation of this kind. It consists of mirrors and flat, empty steel frames arranged to create a sequence of vantages, including positions from which the frames appear—through reflection—to multiply endlessly, a virtual impression of infinite regress.
Beginning in 1973 Robet Morris also embarked on a long series of drawings titled Blind Time. The drawings were produced by the artist with his eyes shut, a bare-handed application of powdered graphite and other mediums directly onto sheets of paper large enough to contain the breadth of his reach. Each drawing follows a set of instructions, or “protocols,” executed according to an estimated length of time.
Together the mirror installations and the Blind Time drawings represent opposing extremes of embodied vision: seeing multiplied and seeing obscured.
Robert Morris: Seeing and Space, is organized by curator and critic Jeffrey Weiss, who has worked extensively on the artist. His past projects include (with Clare Davies) the book Robert Morris: Object Sculpture, 1960-1965, published by Castelli Gallery in partnership with Yale University Press, and Robert Morris: The Perceiving Body, an exhibition that appeared at the Museum of Modern Art (MUDAM), Luxembourg.
CASTELLI GALLERY
24 West 40th Street, New York, NY 10018
