Wade Kramm, Howard Schwartzberg, Susan Silas @ Catskill Art Space, Livingston Manor, NY + Long-term Installations of James Turrell, Sol LeWitt, Francis Cape, Ellen Brooks

Wade Kramm, Howard Schwartzberg, Susan Silas 

Catskill Art Space, Livingston Manor

Through June 21, 2025

Catskill Art Space (CAS) presents an exhibition of work by Wade Kramm, Howard Schwartzberg, and Susan Silas. 

WADE KRAMM

© Wade Kramm

WADE KRAMM's Wall Fragments jolt perception and manipulate space by strategically placing mirror-like portals on the gallery's walls, floors, and corners. These perceived architectural realities made from building materials (such as drywall, molding, floorboards, and doors) expand our perceptual awareness while also making us cognizant of the perceptual process we use when constructing the world by looking at it. Standing in front of each piece, the phenomenological experience fluctuates between simply seeing the materials as materials and a perceptual/physical engagement with the new spaces within the surrounding architecture. Kramm's art explores Minimalism, architecture, and perception to reshape the viewer's engagement with the gallery space.

WADE KRAMM is an installation artist based in New York and Pittsburgh. His work has been exhibited at Piero Atchugarry Gallery (Pueblo Garzon, Uruguay), Tapir Gallery (Berlin, Germany), Cue Art Foundation (New York, NY), Odetta Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), Space 776 (Brooklyn, NY), Sammer Gallery (New York, NY), Concept Gallery (Pittsburgh, PA), Esther M. Klein Art Gallery (Philadelphia, PA); Athens Contemporary Museum of Art (Athens, GA); Expo Chicago (Chicago, IL), and Art Project Fair (Verona, Italy). Wade Kramm received his M.F.A. in sculpture at the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI.

HOWARD SCHWARTZBERG

© Howard Schwartzberg

HOWARD SCHWARTZBERG presents work that explores his evolving language of painting, investigating how canvas and paint interact beyond traditional illusion. Rejecting conventional rectangular formats, he seeks to expand the painting's possibilities by questioning its structure and presentation. His process, influenced by reverse brainstorming and a respect for art history, involves repurposing existing visual languages to uncover new creative directions. Through this approach, he challenges material boundaries, embracing painting as an exploration of space, time, and transformation rather than mere image-making.

HOWARD SCHWARTZBERG was born in 1965 in Coney Island, Brooklyn. He received his BFA from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY, and his Master's in Education from the University of New England, Maine. Schwartzberg began showing work in 1990 at The Drawing Center and Stux Gallery. He has had solo exhibitions at Momenta Art, Silverstein Gallery, Dorsky Gallery, and most recently at the Private Public Gallery in Hudson, NY. After twenty years of focusing on art-making with Education, in 2020, Howard Schwartzberg retired from the NYC Public School System, and In 2016, he began making his paintings again.

SUSAN SILAS

© Susan Silas

After delivering a eulogy for her mother, SUSAN SILAS considered how she would be eulogized and what ideas and entities outlive us. Susan Silas has created work that responds to contemporary concepts of immortality, particularly Whole Brain Emulation, which proposes uploading human consciousness to an inorganic substrate—an idea largely discussed by men and based on the assumption that mind and body can be separated. To explore this, she created an avatar to house her hypothetical brain upload and extended the concept into three sculptures in the form of manipulated busts of her likeness. The works are a long-standing inquiry into embodiment and how technology reshapes our understanding of selfhood.

SUSAN SILAS has had recent solo exhibitions at The University of Kentucky Art Museum, Koli Art Space in Istanbul, Studio 10 in Bushwick, and CB1 in Los Angeles, as well as group exhibitions, including BIENALSUR 2024, Cuvo 2023 in Spain, CURRENTS 2021 in Santa Fe, and WRO2021 REVERSO in Wroclaw, Poland in 2020, along with shows at Wasserman Projects in Detroit, bitforms gallery in New York, and Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken in Germany. She has also participated in recent panels sponsored by Horasis USA, The Wiener Holocaust Library in London, and the Leverhulme Center for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge.

+ Long-term Installations at Catskill Art Space 

Following a major renovation and expansion, Catskill Art Space reopened in October 2022 with a long-term presentation of JAMES TURRELL’s Avaar (1982) in a custom-built gallery on the building’s second floor. A room-sized installation, Avaar is an important example of the artist’s early, wall-based “aperture” works, which function by creating two areas within a room. There is a “viewing space,” where one stands to see and experience the work, and a “sensing space,” which is an ambiguously defined area of diffused light. Avaar is one of the rare examples of Turrell’s aperture works to make use of white lighting only; no colors will be present in the installation. This work is in the collection of the Seattle Art Museum, which has granted CAS a special long-term loan to exhibit the work. The presentation at CAS marks the first time the work has been shown since the 1970s, giving audiences from the Catskills and beyond the rare opportunity to experience a major Turrell work that has not been seen in nearly five decades.

On the second floor’s central landing, SOL LEWITT’s vibrant Wall Drawing #992 unfolds in three sections, each consisting of 10,000 straight lines drawn in color marker, to create a mesmerizing arrangement of primary colors. On the fourth wall, presenting LeWitt’s Wall Drawing #991, straight, arced, and organic lines will encompass the wall in black marker and pencil. The conceptual, minimalist artist conceived guidelines for his two-dimensional works to be drawn directly on the wall. Much like Turrell’s Avaar, the LeWitt works were realized for CAS’s space; in this instance, they are generously loaned by the artist’s estate. This work was overseen by a draftsperson, who determines the length and placement of the lines, and executed by five artists local to the area over nearly two weeks.

The newly realized performance space on CAS’s second floor hosts British sculptor FRANCIS CAPE’s A Gathering of Utopian Benches—an installation of meticulous copies of benches built and used by communal societies. Cape’s installations have always argued that design and craft express belief. Utopian Benches, which has toured extensively throughout the US, was built from poplar grown near Cape’s studio in Narrowsburg, NY. To be considered both as contemporary sculpture as well as furniture that visitors can actively use, the benches reference the societies who first used them, inviting visitors to utilize them for exchange, discourse, and community. The installation, which is meant to be used by visitors both for contemplation and may be used for performance seating, overlooks an expansive wall of windows onto the Willowemoc Creek.

ELLEN BROOKS inaugurates an intimate gallery space, framed by a partially open staircase, with Hang (2022), an installation suspending over 30 feet of scrolls of film negatives from the ceiling. The artist hangs transparencies and negatives in all formats and from clips attached to the ceiling, mimicking the practice of film photography. Hanging negatives reference the surrounding natural landscaping, evoking a cascading waterfall with coils of film collecting on the ground floor gallery.

CATSKILL ART SPACE

48 Main Street, Livingston Manor, NY 12758

www.catskillartspace.org

Wade Kramm, Howard Schwartzberg, Susan Silas 

Catskill Art Space, Livingston Manor, May 3 - June 21, 2025

Sol LeWitt at Turner Contemporary, Margate, Kent, UK

Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing #1136 
Turner Contemporary, Margate, Kent 
3 December 2013 - 8 June 2014

Turner Contemporary in UK showcases work by the prolific and influential American artist SOL LEWITT (1928-2007), presenting his spectacular Wall Drawing #1136 in the gallery’s Clore Learning Studio.

The work is one of a number of vibrant drawings Sol LeWitt made in the last years of his life, following his earlier works in pencil and ink. Curved and vertical bands of brightly coloured acrylic paint (every primary and secondary colour plus grey) are applied by hand directly onto the walls to create a dazzling environment that surrounds the viewer.

Sol LeWitt is particularly associated with the development of Conceptual art in the 1960s. Like other conceptual art works by Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing #1136 is concerned with ideas of geometry, repetition and mathematical precision and exists as a set of instructions written by the artist and accompanied by an illustrated diagram. Designed to be physically executed by others (only the very first Wall Drawing was produced by LeWitt himself) the works can be endlessly repeated in different locations at different times, generally only existing for the period of the exhibition.

Wall Drawing #1136 is on loan from ARTIST ROOMS, an inspirational collection of modern and contemporary art acquired for the nation by Tate and The National Galleries of Scotland through the generosity of Anthony d'Offay with additional support from funders, including the Art Fund. The ARTIST ROOMS tour programme, now in its sixth year, is showing at 18 museums and galleries across the UK in 2014. The tour is made possible thanks to the support of Arts Council England and the Art Fund.

To find out more information about ARTIST ROOMS On Tour visit artfund.org/artistrooms. To see the full ARTIST ROOMS collection visit tate.org.uk/artistrooms and nationalgalleries.org/artistrooms.

TURNER CONTEMPORARY 

Rendezvous, Margate, Kent, CT9 1HG, UK

www.turnercontemporary.org

Drawing Machines at Gregor Podnar Gallery Berlin

Cimento dell’armonia e dell’invenzione:
or, The Drawing Machines
Galerija Gregor Podnar, Berlin
Through January 8, 2011

Artists: William Anastasi, Anna Barham, Emanuele Becheri, Alighiero Boetti, Ane Mette Hol, Albin Karlsson, Tim Knowles, Nick Laessing, Sol LeWitt, Giovanni Morbin, Marc Nagtzaam, Goran Petercol, Diogo Pimentão, Steve Roden, Jean Tinguely.

Cimento dell’armonia e dell’invenzione (“Trial of Harmony and Invention”) is the title of a 1969 work by ALIGHIERO BOETTI, a series of drawings in which he traced the lines of sheets of graph paper following a different path each time. A work that opposes established order (“armonia”) and the creation of something new (“invenzione”). The idea of both being at odds with each other is interesting, especially if it is applied to machinery and draughtsmanship.

The exhibition focuses on artists who produce drawings with machines or mechanisms following the path opened by JEAN TINGUELY’s drawing (and painting) machines Méta-Matics, but also by self imposed rules echoing the mathematical basis of mechanical procedures, such as Alighiero Boetti himself, SOL LEWITT, WILLIAM ANASTASI...

In fact, from the mid XXth century on, artistic drawing has been partly predicated upon drawing machines or mechanisms. Even in a broader and historical view, which has certainly influenced this phenomenon, drawing has been associated with mechanics in a combination of recreational and scientific uses. From the Jacquet-Droz automaton, which could draw (1772) to a machine inscribing on a sheet of paper the trajectory of a falling body, invented by Arthur Morin (1864), drawing has been both imitated and used. Etienne-Jules Marey, the inventor of chronophotography and other breathtaking experimental devices, researched the graphic translation of the body’s movements through the sphygmograph and the cardiograph, for instance, which were able to “draw” the beating of the human heart.

At first, it could seem odd that drawing, a hand-based craft par excellence, was to be included in the domain of machine-made articles. But on closer inspection, automata imitating the skills of the draughtsman upset the standards by which drawing is normally adjudged as such and announce modernity: they demonstrate the mechanic aspect of drawing without destroying its appeal. Rather, they increase it. A triangular relation between the viewer, the artist and the machine, is thus implemented. The act of creation is assumed by others, namely the machine itself, while the artist operates like one. Drawing with, or like, a machine implies an alliance of the hand, the eye, the mind, the device, the artifact, the formula and the rule.

The contemplative and epistemological role of mimesis and utility are at stake here. For from this point on, the extraction of drawn data as well as the graphic transposition of the movement of matter moulds a different and modern beauty, largely based on abstraction and, the moment drawing becomes the result of self-applied rules or exterior factors, chance-based opportunities for the unpredictable emerges. Charles Baudelaire sensed this rather early when he confessed that a fine drawing captivates us beyond what it depicts ( in L’Oeuvre et la vie d’Eugène Delacroix, 1863).

On the other hand, freed from intention and traditional ideas of quality, and fascinated by machines, the artist chooses to work programmatically. Therefore, this abstract beauty is sometimes generated by a hand carefully automated by seriality and a rigorous set of rules.

But to return to Alighiero Boetti, a debate is then established as to what, exactly, one considers “harmony” and “invention” to be: would the mechanical aspect of drawing (i.e., order) be harmony? But aren’t machines, as actual mechanism or as rules and protocols, inventions? Should one consider chance itself to be the source of “invention”, as opposed to a system? Thus does this show aim to reveal the complexity and ambiguity that lurks behind such seemingly definite categories.

Cimento dell’armonia e dell’invenzione: or, The Drawing Machines showcases historical and recent works exploring this path of contradictions between the skilled machine and the automated draughtsman, connected by the mesmerizing appeal of their abstract productions, and so much more.

The exhibition is curated by SIMONE MENEGOI and accompanied by a writing of JOANA NEVES, The Drawing Automaton, or the Mechanics of Drawing.

GALERIJA GREGOR PODNAR BERLIN
Lindenstr. 35 - 10969 Berlin - Germany

www.gregorpodnar.com 

13.11.2010 - 08.01.2011

Sol LeWitt: The Complex Form, Dorfman Projects, NYC

Sol LeWitt: The Complex Form
Dorfman Projects, New York
September 15 – October 30, 2010 

Dorfman Projects presents Sol LeWitt: The Complex Form, a focus exhibition exploring Sol LeWitt's study of the complex form through works on paper, ephemera and sculpture, with a spotlight on his 1988 monumental work in metal, Complex Form #6.

Although Sol LeWitt is typically regarded as both a minimalist and a conceptual artist, this period of work, which ranged from the mid 80's to early 90's, represents a zenith in his exploration of geometry and a step away from the minimal. Aptly named, the complex forms incorporate more complicated shapes, non-right angles, and compositions defined by juxtaposition rather than systematic organization.

From the start of his career, Sol LeWitt followed his fascination with the cube, using it as unit, medium, and subject for many of his most iconic works. Over time however, Sol LeWitt opened up to different types of building blocks for his constructions. Beginning with elemental forms such as the triangle and pyramid, Sol LeWitt's compositional play led him to include more irregular shapes such as parallelograms and quadrilaterals. In the most mature examples of this extensive body of work, which includes drawing, sculpture, prints, and monumental wall drawings, Sol LeWitt developed complex arrangements that contain a diversity of geometric forms within a single piece.

Though Sol LeWitt had by no means exhausted the cube completely—he continued to work with it until the end of his life—the complex form period remains one of the most intriguing and least studied phases of his career. The sculpture on view, Complex Form #6, is in many ways the finest and most evolved example of a complex form. Through the dynamic addition and subtraction of shapes, this large-scale work makes an exhaustive study of angles that change constantly in relation to the viewer's position around it. Unlike earlier work that meticulously adhered to systems and order, these complex pieces personify quiet and studied rebellion. With supporting prints, sculpture, and ephemera, this exhibition illustrates the evolution of LeWitt's process and his arrival at this culminating masterpiece.

SOL LEWITT was born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1928 and died in New York City in 2007. His work has been exhibited extensively worldwide. To name only a few examples, in 2000, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art hosted a major retrospective (which travelled to the Museum of Modern Art, Chicago and the Whitney); in 2006 Dia: Beacon hosted a large scale exhibition of wall drawings called Drawing Series...; and in 2008, the Yale University Art Gallery, Mass MoCA, and the Williams College Museum of Art collaborated to present Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective, which will remain at Mass MoCA for the next 25 years.

DORFMAN PROJECTS
529 West 20th Street #7E, New York, NY 10011
www.dorfmanprojects.com

Updated 06.07.2019

On the Square: Art Elemental Form

 

More than half a century of artists' meditations

on art history's most elemental form.

 

Josef Albers, Tara Donovan, Tony Feher, Dan Flavin, Alfred Jensen,

Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Robert Mangold, Agnes Martin,

Louise Nevelson, Ad Reinhardt, Lucas Samaras,

Joel Shapiro, James Siena, Keith Tyson, Corban Walker

 

© JAMES SIENA, Untitled (Iterative Grid), 2009
enamel on aluminum painting 29" x 22-3/4"
Courtesy PaceWildenstein, New York

 

© JAMES SIENA, Untitled (Iterative grid, second version), 2009
enamel on aluminum painting 19-1/4" x 15-1/8"
Courtesy PaceWildenstein, New York

 

PaceWildenstein presents a group exhibition that brings together works by some of the most significant artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, paying homage to the square, an elemental form that has helped to define and shape the practice of modern and contemporary art.

The exhibition features sculptures and paintings by 16 artists, including Josef Albers, Tara Donovan, Tony Feher, Dan Flavin, Alfred Jensen, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Robert Mangold, Agnes Martin, Louise Nevelson, Ad Reinhardt, Lucas Samaras, Joel Shapiro, James Siena, Keith Tyson, and Corban Walker. On the Square will be on view at 32 East 57th Street gallery from January 8 through February 13, 2010.

In the late 1960s, Sol LeWitt famously articulated the value of the square’s (or the cube’s) “uninteresting” form: “Released from the necessity of being significant in themselves, they can be better used as grammatical devices from which the work may proceed. The use of a square or cube obviates the necessity of inventing other forms and reserves their use for invention.” Indeed, “the square,” perhaps the most stabile, enduring, and neutral form, a New York art critic argued in her homage to this elemental form in 1967, provides a universal standard that is as attractive in its precision and neutrality to the space age as it was to early philosophers and theologians.”

From deconstruction to reconstruction, creation and re-dissolution [1], for the artists included in this exhibition, the square and its permutations have served as a frame for formal invention. Josef Albers, Alfred Jensen, and Ad Reinhardt used the square as the basic organizing framework for their systems of color theory. Josef Albers once explained that he “prefer[red] to think of the square as a stage on which colors play as actors influencing each other—a visual excitement called interaction.” The arrangement of squares within Josef Albers’ Homage to the Square paintings and prints were “a convenient carrier” for his color “instrumentation”—a “container for and a dish to serve [his] cooking in.”

The square was an important defining unit for Minimalists and Conceptualists, who used more objective methodologies with mathematical and logic-based systems.  Artists such as Donald Judd and Sol LeWitt focusing on spatial organization through sculpture, used the box as the basic unit with which to define real space. “The problem is for any artist to find the concatenation that will grow,” Judd once explained. He emptied space of its inessentials and then re-articulated it with carefully placed objects: closed or open, stacked—vertically or horizontally, placed on the floor, hung on the wall, colored in one or multiple colors; the spacing of the units became as important as the pieces themselves.

The square remains an important element for artists working today. The square enables Joel Shapiro to move fluidly between figuration and abstraction, as he conjoins elongated boxes into evocative constructions. With a nod to minimalism, Tony Feher articulates the repetition of the form in stacked plastic beverage crates (Century Plant, 2002), revealing beauty in the simplest gesture.

The exhibition also includes works by James Siena, Tara Donovan, and Keith Tyson, who use subunits to create works resulting in multiple variations. In pieces such as Keith Tyson’s Geno Pheno Sculpture: “Automata No. 2,” the cube serves as the fundamental component for the phenotype generated by the base. The square is the foundation for James Siena’s enamel on aluminum paintings from 2009, as his visual algorithms cascade into dizzying, pulsating patterns. With the square, a jumble of straight pins finds order and clarity in Tara Donovan’s shimmering Untitled (Pins), 2004.

 

[1] Ad Reinhardt, “25 Lines of Words on Art Statement” from It Is (New York), Spring 1958.

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

Sol LeWitt: A Retrospective, SFMOMA, San Francisco

Sol LeWitt: A Retrospective
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
February 19 - May 30, 2000

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) will highlight 40 years of work by Sol LeWitt in the long-awaited exhibition Sol LeWitt: A Retrospective. The first comprehensive survey of Sol LeWitt's work since 1978, the retrospective will present over 200 works -- ranging from the well known wall drawings and structures to photographs, books and works on paper -- from each phase of the artist's career. Organized by Gary Garrels, SFMOMA Elise S. Haas Chief Curator and curator of painting and sculpture, in collaboration with Sol LeWitt, the exhibition will open on February 19 and be on view in the Museum's fourth-floor galleries through May 21, 2000, and in the fifth-floor galleries through May 30, 2000.

Sol LeWitt was born in 1928 in Hartford, Connecticut, and received his BFA in 1949 from Syracuse University. In 1953 he moved to New York, where he attended what is now known as the School of Visual Arts, and from 1955 to 1956 worked as a graphic artist for the architect I.M. Pei. In the mid-1960s, he began taking occasional teaching positions at art schools including Cooper Union, the School of Visual Arts and New York University. His work was first publicly exhibited in 1963 at St. Mark's Church, New York.

Since 1965, Sol LeWitt has had hundreds of solo exhibitions. His first retrospective was presented at the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague in 1970 and later showcased in a major mid-career retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1978. His work has been featured in innumerable group exhibitions. Sol LeWitt's pieces have been collected by some of the most prestigious museums in the world, including SFMOMA, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Gallery of Art, Paris's Musée National d'Art Moderne, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum and the Tate Gallery, London. 

Development of a Distinct Philosophy 

Beginning in 1962, Sol LeWitt began to make a series of geometric wall reliefs, soon moving to free-standing objects or "structures," the name he uses for all of this sculptural work. At this time his work was closely related to that of other artists, including Carl Andre, Donald Judd and Robert Morris, who were developing the movement that was dubbed Minimalism. By 1964 his structures had been simplified to open, linear forms, in which ideas could be explored in permutations and series.

In the mid-1960s, he pioneered the Conceptual art movement, emphasizing ideas for the generation of art rather than working from physical materials. LeWitt published "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art," an influential statement on Conceptualism, in a 1967 issue of Artforum and followed this with "Sentences on Conceptual Art," which appeared in Art Language in 1969.

In "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art," Sol LeWitt stated the importance of reduction in the artistic process: "When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes the machine that makes the art." His work is focused upon the ideas behind it and the proscribed rendering of form to realize a physical manifestation of those ideas. 

Supporting his idea that the thought is more important than the act, Sol LeWitt rejects the notion of art as a unique and precious object. He often uses assistants to execute the works based upon his detailed instructions. Adherence to LeWitt's system does not validate a scientific principle or insure technical perfection. For Sol LeWitt, an idea may be mathematically or scientifically invalid, but as long as the executor follows the system established by the artist, a true expression of the idea is produced. The intent is to merely to make good art. Instructions for executing a work give way to any number of physical manifestations of an idea; some will be beautiful, some will not, but the idea maintains its integrity. His art exists, above all, in the space between the artist's conception and the viewer's reception; it is dependent upon the viewer's sensory responses for its completion. Some instructions are simple and straightforward and some are long and complex.

For example, Sol LeWitt's instructions for the execution of Wall Drawing #340, 1980, mandates: 

Six-part drawing. The wall is divided horizontally and vertically into six equal parts. 1st part: On red, blue horizontal parallel lines, and in the center, a circle within which are yellow vertical parallel lines; 2nd part: On yellow, red horizontal parallel lines, and in the center, a square within which are blue vertical parallel lines; 3rd part: On blue, yellow horizontal parallel lines, and in the center, a triangle within which are red vertical parallel lines; 4th part: On red, yellow horizontal parallel lines, and in the center, a rectangle within which are blue vertical parallel lines; 5th part: On yellow, blue horizontal parallel lines, and in the center, a trapezoid within which are red vertical parallel lines; 6th part: On blue, red horizontal parallel lines, and in the center, a parallelogram within which are yellow vertical parallel lines. The horizontal lines do not enter the figures.

Sol LeWitt's work strikes a delicate balance between perceptual and conceptual qualities; between dedication to the simplicity and order of geometry and his pursuit of visual beauty and intuitive creation; and between his authorship and anonymity regarding his work. Wall drawings, perhaps more than any other medium Sol LeWitt uses, illustrate this inherent tension between craftsmanship and anonymity. The historical precedent of Renaissance fresco painting, which LeWitt deeply admires, is counterbalanced by the execution of his wall drawings. By using industrial materials that erase any trace of craft and employing assistants to execute his ideas, LeWitt was one of the first artists to renounce the importance of the artist's hand. However, LeWitt's desire to adhere to a system does not negate his wish to create truly beautiful wall drawings. As the artist said in the early 1980s, "I would like to produce something I would not be ashamed to show Giotto." 

Four Decades of Work

In 1968 Sol LeWitt made his first artist's book, developing an array of variations of straight lines, overdrawn in four directions. In a logical extension, LeWitt made the radical break of executing some of these drawings in large scale with pencil directly on the wall, the first of his "wall drawings," which would form the basis for his most sustained, important and richly developed work over the next thirty years. This shift also set the pattern throughout his career of moving readily back and forth between works on paper, wall drawings and structures. It is this way of working through theme and variation among media and materials that will be highlighted in the SFMOMA retrospective. 

Idea, detail and execution merge in the work Incomplete Open Cubes, 1974, in which Sol LeWitt explores all possible configurations of an incomplete cube. Each arrangement is expressed in three ways: as a three-dimensional wooden structure composed of eight-inch segments; as a schematic drawing; and a photograph of the sculpture. In its most reduced state, the cube is achieved with three segments. At its most complex, it is fashioned with eleven edges and comes closest to forming a complete cube. Between the boundaries, Sol LeWitt illustrates each possibility of a cube-structures with four segments, five segments and so on. He presents the elements by rank, with both the sculptures and pictures ordered from the least to most complex.

In the 1980s, Sol LeWitt's work shifted significantly. Geometric shapes and their permutations became the dominant subject of his 1980s wall drawings, which are executed in layers of colored ink washes that create an extraordinarily varied palette of luminous tones. His works, until then linear and muted, now included three geometric shapes -- circle, square and cone -- and were created with a richer and warmer palette. For example in 1982, Sol LeWitt executed a series entitled Forms Derived from a Cube, in which he depicted variations of geometric elements found within a cube. The piece signifies the beginning of a more selective and interpretive approach to his work; with an innumerable number of possible permutations of a cube, LeWitt chose to depict only 24 variations. These, in turn, at the end of the decade, inspired a new series of complex geometric, crystal-like forms, executed both as multi-colored wall drawings and as structures of white painted wood that erupt from the floor. 

Over the years, Sol LeWitt repeatedly experimented with the idea of a star in different colors and configurations. His Star series exemplifies the artist's mature exploration of serialism and geometry. LeWitt's 1996 Wall Drawing #808 -- presented at the Bienal Internacional São Paolo where Sol LeWitt represented the United States -- presents an array of three-to nine-pointed stars, each centered within a black-bordered rectangular section of wall space. The artist's strict use of geometry dictates that each star is constructed from the form of a regular polygon, and each point of the star rests on the circumference of a circle. Sol LeWitt achieves the broad range of color in each section through a process of layering, rather than mixing, his traditional four colors. In later works from the 1990s -- such as Wall Drawing #879: Loopy Doopy (Black and White), 1998, which is composed of broad, lively swirls -- Sol LeWitt began to incorporate more fluid shapes and wider brushstrokes. Moving away from the strict systematic forms of his earlier work, the latest pieces have a rhythmic optical playfulness and exuberance, an almost decorative quality, often combining bright, saturated colors with alternately saturated blacks.

Sol LeWitt: A Retrospective will be accompanied by a 368-page catalogue with essays by Martin Friedman, Gary Garrels, Andrea Miller-Keller, Brenda Richardson, Anne Rorimer, John Weber and Adam Weinberg. Featuring a lavish photo section with 140 color and 315 black-and-white photographs, the catalogue also includes a selection of Sol LeWitt's writings, the complete exhibition checklist and a bibliography. The catalogue is co-published by the Yale University Press and will be available in a $39.95 softcover edition and a $75 cloth edition at the SFMOMA MuseumStore. In addition, SFMOMA's Education Department will present a host of public programs, including a studio program for youth, a three-part lecture series and a half-day symposium. 

After its SFMOMA presentation, the exhibition will travel to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (July to October 2000), the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (October 2000 to February 2001) and other international venues. 

Sol LeWitt: A Retrospective is organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Support for this exhibition has been generously provided by the Henry Luce Foundation and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support is provided by Henry S. McNeil Jr.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art - SFMOMA
151 Third Street, San Francisco, CA 94103
www.sfmoma.org

Robert Rymann, Tim Rollins + K.O.S at WCMA, Williamstown - Beyond Borders: Two Portfolios by Robert Ryman and Tim Rollins + K.O.S.

Beyond Borders: 

Two Portfolios by Robert Ryman and Tim Rollins + K.O.S.

WCMA, Williamstown

July 18 - End of 1998

Two portfolios of prints by American contemporary artists ROBERT RYMAN and TIM ROLLINS + K.O.S. are on display at the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) through the end of the year. The show, "Beyond Borders: Two Portfolios by Robert Ryman and Tim Rollins + K.O.S.," challenges how viewers see art and explores commonly held notions about who can produce artwork and for whom it is created.

The exhibition features aquatints by Robert Ryman from 1975 and etchings by Tim Rollins + K.O.S., The Temptation of Saint Antony I-XIV, from 1989. Both artists are represented in major museum collections and have exhibited nationally and internationally. The pieces are on loan from the collection of the well-known conceptual artist Sol LeWitt, who has supported his colleagues through his noted collection of conceptual, minimal, and post-minimal art.

 "We are grateful to Sol LeWitt whose generosity to New England museums and other artists is legendary," said Linda Shearer, director of WCMA. "Although each artist came of age in different decades--Ryman in the 1960s and Rollins in the 1980s, there is a remarkable affinity between their work."

Born in 1930, ROBERT RYMAN sees the challenge of painting as "discovering a new way of seeing." After studying music in college, Ryman moved to New York in 1952 and began to experiment with painting. Since 1955 Robert Ryman has worked predominantly in white. "The use of white in my paintings came about when I realized that it didn’t interfere. It's a neutral color that allows for clarification of nuances in painting. It makes other aspects of painting visible that would not be so clear with the use of other colors." The variations of the square, the border, and even his signature quietly challenge the viewer to look closely to uncover important differences that reveal the artist's process.

TIM ROLLINS, who was born in 1955, has worked collaboratively since the early 1980s with K.O.S., a changing group of teenagers from the South Bronx in New York who call themselves "Kids of Survival." He describes his work with them as "making a way out of no way through art." As a special education teacher, Tim Rollins engaged his students who had been designated as "learning disabled," using a progressive and collaborative method. The fourteen prints on loan to WCMA from the Sol LeWitt Collection are based on Gustave Flaubert’s hallucinogenic prose-poem The Temptation of Saint Antony. Created by Tim Rollins with Richard Cruz, George Garces, Carlos Rivera, Nelson Savinon, and printed by San Francisco’s Crown Point Press, the etchings have an organic and haunting quality that demonstrates the group’s ability to translate the experience of language and life into visual imagery.

This exhibition was organized by summer intern Dorothy Moss, Williams College Graduate Program in Art History, Class of 1999.

WCMA - WILLIAMS COLLEGE MUSEUM OF ART

15 Lawrence Hall Drive, Ste 2, Williamstown, MA 01267

www.williams.edu

Sol LeWitt Wall Drawing 830 Sackler Museum

A new wall drawing by conceptual artist Sol LeWitt (b. 1928), Wall Drawing #830: Four Isometric Figures with Color Ink Washes Superimposed, has been installed in the Arthur M. Sackler Museum's lobby – Harvard University Art Museums. Comprising four large-scale geometric shapes on fields of primary colors, the drawing dramatically amplifies and animates the Sackler's double-height entry space. The project was organized by James Cuno, director of the Art Museums, to create a friendlier, more inviting space for visitors, while at the same time giving the public easy access to a major work by one of our generation's premier draftsmen.

Sol LeWitt has been a dominating influence in contemporary art for several decades. His wall drawings have been installed in major museums worldwide. Although his work emphasizes conception rather than implementation, the final product is always visually pleasing.

"This is a beautiful work of art in its own right, but all the more beautiful for how it transforms and enhances the lobby of the Sackler Museum," said James Cuno. "We believe it demonstrates our commitment to working with contemporary artists and to offering our public new, exciting, and easily accessible aesthetic experiences. Anyone walking down Quincy Street or Broadway can now take refuge in the midst of a great work of art."

The installation of Wall Drawing #830 was led by Anthony Sansotta, who has worked with LeWitt for nineteen years, with the help of other assistants to LeWitt, local students and artists and staff at the Art Museums. The project was supported by the Contemporary Art Sub-Committee of the Art Museums Collections Committee, led by Gabriella de Ferrari and Bruce Beal.

The museum is located at 485 Broadway, Cambridge, Massachusetts.