Andy Warhol at Dia Center for the Arts, New York

Andy Warhol: Shadows
Dia Center for the Arts, New York
December 4, 1998 - June 13, 1999

Dia Center for the Arts presents an exhibition of Andy Warhol's Shadows (1978), a single work comprised of over 100 panels. The installation will be on view in Dia's 545 West 22nd Street exhibition gallery. 

Acquired directly from the artist in 1979, Shadows remains a centerpiece of Dia's collection. The scale and ambition of Shadows, while grand even for Warhol, is characteristic of the key works in Dia's collection. This presentation of Shadows will constitute the second exhibition in Dia's new facility at 545 West 22nd Street. The paintings will be hung contiguously around the 298 feet of the gallery's perimeter, sequenced according to the artist's original plan, and in conformity with his conception of the work, which he designated as "one painting with...parts."

Each panel, measuring 76 x 52 inches, is of acrylic paint, variously silkscreened and handpainted on canvas. The whole encompasses an extraordinary range of colors, from subtle and muted to brilliant neon, placing Shadows among Warhol's most remarkable and compelling works.

Andy Warhol was born on August 6, 1928, in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, to immigrant parents of Czechoslovakian descent. He studied design at Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh from 1945 to 1949. After a successful and distinguished career as a commercial illustrator in New York in the 1950s, he began exhibiting his paintings with silkscreened Pop imagery in 1962. In 1963 he began making films. Thereafter, his work was shown widely. Andy Warhol died on February 22, 1987.

Dia Center for the Arts
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Tracey Moffatt at Dia Center for the Arts, NYC

Tracey Moffatt: Free-falling
Dia Center for the Arts, New York
October 9, 1997 - June 14, 1998

Dia Center for the Arts presents an exhibition of the work of Australian photographer and filmmaker, Tracey Moffatt. This exhibition, entitled Free-falling, will be on view on the fourth floor of Dia's galleries at 548 West 22nd Street, New York City.

Free-falling includes two newly commissioned works: a suite of twenty-five photographs called Up in the Sky (1996) and a video installation, Tracey Moffatt's first in this medium. The subject of this video piece will be a surfer, a figure close to the heart of Australia's contemporary self-image. By contrast, Up in the Sky, which was shot near Broken Hill in the Outback, draws on imagery and a landscape that have long been central to the Australian mythos. In addition, the exhibition includes Guapa (Goodlooking), a series of twelve monochrome photographs loosely based on the theme of the roller derby, which Tracey Moffatt made in 1995 while on a residency at ArtPace in San Antonio, and Night Cries: A Rural Tragedy (1990), her early but prophetic short film. Guapa explores the intersection of violence with eroticism as sanctioned under the umbrella of sport. Silhouetted against neutral backdrops, the carefully choreographed female contestants create formally compelling images recalling at times sculptural groupings from the art of the past: artifice is as intrinsic to this sport as it is to Tracey Moffatt's aesthetic.

Of Abori-ginal descent, Tracey Moffatt has gained increasing international attention in the past several years. In 1995 she was awarded a prize at the Kwangju Biennale in Korea, and two of her films were shown at the Cannes Film Festival. Given that she is also included in this year's Venice Biennale and Site Santa Fe exhibitions, Tracey Moffatt, who was born in 1960 in Brisbane, is among the preeminent Australian artists of her generation. Free-falling is her most substantial exhibition to date.

Major funding for this exhibition has been provided by the Lannan Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Embassy of Australia on behalf of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and The Australia Council for the Arts with an additional generous contribution by the Wolfensohn Family Foundation.

Dia Center for the Arts
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Richard Serra at Dia Center for the Arts, New York

Richard Serra: "Torqued Ellipses"
Dia Center for the Arts, New York
September 25, 1997 - June 14, 1998

Dia Center for the Arts presents an exhibition of new sculpture by the American artist RICHARD SERRA. Titled "Torqued Ellipses," this exhibition will mark the debut of Dia's second exhibition building for temporary exhibitions, at 545 West 22nd Street, located directly across the street from its current facility at 548 West 22nd Street, New York City.

The Torqued Ellipses mark a new departure in Richard Serra's oeuvre, one which involves bending steel in a totally unprecedented manner. Four years ago, Serra conceived this group of approximately twenty sculptures in the form of lead models. A CATIA computer program was developed from the models to enable a rolling machine to torque the steel plates. After a protracted search, Serra finally located Beth Ship, a shipyard and rolling mill at Sparrow's Point outside Baltimore, which was willing to undertake the project. To date, four sculptures from this series have been realized, three of which will be on view at Dia this fall.

As Mark Taylor writes in his essay for the catalogue that will accompany the exhibition:

The effect of these works is extraordinary. Though made of heavy industrial materials and massive in size, they have the delicacy of finely folded ribbon or even paper twisted to form a Möbius strip that never quite reaches closure. As one moves from outside to inside by passing through the gap in these works, everything shifts. Lines that appear straight on the outside bend and buckle on the inside; arcs that seem to tilt away when viewed from without bend inward to enfold subject in object when experienced from within. As twisted space surrounds or even circulates through the perceptive body, the space and time of the work of art become utterly destabilizing and disorienting.

Born in San Francisco in 1939, RICHARD SERRA has a longstanding engagement with steel. After financing his college degree by working in steel mills, Serra adopted steel as his preferred material in the late sixties: he has continued to use it in different ways, propped, bent, forged, and rolled for over three decades.

Since his first solo show in Rome in 1966, Richard Serra has had numerous exhibitions throughout the world, including a 1986 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In addition, he has created a number of seminal site-specific sculptures in public venues in both North America and Europe. Most recently, as his contribution to the current Sculpture Projects in Münster, Germany, Serra was commissioned to make a permanent installation at one of that city's most renowned historic buildings, the Haus Rüschhaus designed by the Baroque architect J.C. Schlaun. Serra recently installed Snake, a 100-feet-long, 13-feet-high sculpture commissioned by the Guggenheim's new museum in Bilbao. In the fall of 1998, he will open an exhibition of large-scale installations at the Geffen Contemporary at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

Dia Center for the Arts
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Fred Sandback at Dia Center for the Arts, New York

Fred Sandback: Sculpture
Dia Center for the Arts, New York
September 12, 1996 - June 29, 1997

American artist Fred Sandback's installation entitled Sculpture, opens to the public at Dia Center for the Arts, 548 West 22nd Street, New York City, on September 12, 1996. The exhibition, located in the second floor gallery, remains on view through June 29, 1997. 

Sculpture is an installation of new works together with older pieces from Dia's extensive collection of Fred Sandback's art. For more than twenty-five years, Fred Sandback has been using linear elements, in particular colored yarns to give physical form, together with impressions of palpability, to the space his work delimits. Defining the boundaries of three-dimensional geometric forms with these minimal means Fred Sandback creates discrete works that co-exist within the continuum of the exhibition space.

Fred Sandback was born in Bronxville, New York in 1943. After studying first philosophy then sculpture at Yale University he moved to New York City where he continues to live and work. Since the late 1960s Sandback has exhibited extensively in the United States and internationally, and his work is represented in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Whitney Museum of American Art, and The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, among others.

Dia Center for the Arts
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Juan Munoz at Dia Center for the Arts, New York

Juan Muñoz: A Place Called Abroad
Dia Center for the Arts, New York
September 26, 1996 - June 29, 1997

Juan Muñoz's installation entitled A Place Called Abroad will open to the public at Dia Center for the Arts, 548 West 22nd Street, New York City, on September 26, 1996.

In creating A Place Called Abroad, Juan Muñoz will transform the 7,500 square foot gallery on Dia's fourth floor into a street-like environment with residual spaces populated by groups of figures. In pursuing his fascination with architecture, Muñoz deconstructs the gallery space, diagonally cutting through existing walls, in order to create a fictional street. Fragments of the pre-existing space remain visible throughout the installation. This overlay of past and present creates a habitat for Muñoz's figures.

In curator Lynne Cooke's 1995 essay for Parkett, Muñoz's figures are described as "withdrawn, absorbed or otherwise distracted" creating a "dislocated dialogue between spectator and artwork." In contrast, Muñoz's newly created figures engage with each other and transform the space into settings for exchange and display.

Juan Muñoz was born in 1953 in Madrid, Spain, where he continues to live and work. Since his first solo show in 1984, Juan Muñoz has exhibited widely. This is his first major one-person show in an American museum.

Major funding for this exhibition has been provided by the Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Spanish Cultural Ministry, Placido Arango and the members of the Dia Art Council.

Dia Center for the Arts
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Hanne Darboven at Dia Center for the Arts, New York

Hanne Darboven: Kulturgeschichte 1880-1983
Dia Center for the Arts, New York

Hanne Darboven's monumental work entitled Kulturgeschichte 1880-1983 (Cultural History 1880-1983), 1980-1983, will open to the public at Dia Center for the Arts, 548 West 22nd Street, New York, on March 28, 1996.

Kulturgeschichte 1880-1983 consists of 1,590 wall-mounted panels of uniform size and format and nineteen objects. It traces one hundred years of history via a miscellany of images and texts that range from postcards to art reproductions, portraits of film stars, and the covers of weekly magazines. Many bear handwritten notes and quotations.

Over the past thirty years, this German artist has created a vast body of work based on time as registered by history and by memory alike. Beginning with the date, whose numbers she manipulates into a temporal and chronological system, Hanne Darboven has in Kulturgeschichte 1880-1983 constructed an encompassing, encyclopedic archive that fuses public history and collective memory with personal experience.

Hanne Darboven was born in 1941 in Munich, Germany. In 1965 she graduated from the Hochschule für Bildende Kunst in Hamburg, where she had studied painting. Between 1966 and 1968, Darboven lived in New York City where she created her first mature works, which placed her at the center of Conceptual art practice. Since 1967 she has participated in numerous national and international exhibitions, including Reconsidering the Object of Art: 1965-1975, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 1995-96. In New York City she has shown with Leo Castelli Gallery since 1973. She lives and works in Hamburg, Germany.

Dia Center for the Arts

548 West 22nd Street, New York
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