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17/9/2003

Robert Barry

Kunsthalle Nurnberg, Nuremberg

In this show we are presenting the most complete exhibition so far of the early work of the American artist Robert Barry (*1936). Numerous public and private collections in Europe and the United States are providing about 65 works from the period 1963 to 1975. Partner of this project is the Aargauer Kunsthaus in Aarau, where the exhibition will be shown from 15 May to 15 August 2004.

Robert Barry, who lives in New Jersey, is, like Dan Graham, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Kosuth or Lawrence Weiner one of the most important protagonists of American conceptual art. Always a contentious term amongst artists themselves, "conceptual art" denotes neither a uniform style nor a common theory. The term was coined by Sol LeWitt who proposed that an idea is already a work of art in 1967 in his essay "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art". Since then conceptual art has come to be used for strongly abstract works that express an idea or a thought process that the beholder takes in and then uses productively according to his own ideas.

Ever since 1967 Robert Barry has been extremely consistent about taking his work to the limits of immateriality and invisibility. He created room installations with wire and nylon thread, performed actions with inert gases and radioactive material and went on to work with acoustic frequencies, sounds and language. Alongside this, slide projections with single words, photographs and text fragments have arisen since 1970. Robert Barry published several artist books and from the early seventies worked almost exclusively with the medium of language. According to Barry, words removed from all syntactic context are not art in themselves but they refer to connected concepts that are communicated by language. One of these concepts is the exploration of spatial experiences and dimensions, which Barry has always pursued, from the paintings and colour objects created between 1963 and 1967 through to the word spaces he is known for today.

The extensive exhibition and the 144 page, bilingual catalogue with recent contributions by Robert C. Morgan, John T. Paoletti and Thomas Wulffen will show the works and groups of works created by Robert Barry in the period 1963 to 1975 as a consistent development that rigorously pursues certain concepts but is also open to new experiences. In addition, the relevance of Robert Barry's early work is to be reviewed and re-assessed in the light of the post-conceptual art of the 90's.

Kunsthalle Nuernberg
Lorenzer Strasse 32
D- 90402 Nürnberg
Phone: +49 (0)911 - 231 2403/2853
Telefax: +49 (0)911 - 231 3721

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