Robert Irwin at Sprüth Magers (Installation View), via Art Observed

Few artists have left such a remarkable imprint on the art and art history of Southern California in the way that Robert Irwin has done over the past 50-plus years. Pioneering a mode of practice that slowly but deliberately broke ranks with the painterly abstraction and object-based practice of the era to develop a mode of art-making that embraced light, form and space as free-floating, conceptual tools.  As a native Californian, Irwin’s work drew heavily from his experience of its delicate nuances in light and tone, the massive expanses of the California desert, evolving into complex geometric arrangements of space using scrim and paint to create shiting densities of light. (more…)

Robert Irwin is profiled in the Art Newspaper this week, as he opens his major permanent installation at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa.  “What I’ve been doing all these years, you couldn’t sell, you couldn’t house it, you couldn’t put it in a museum,” he says. “Marfa was a good place for me to fantasize some idea of what I might do, which for a long time was all I had… It was a nice place for me to stretch my legs a little and try some things.” (more…)

Robert Irwin, Dawn to Dusk (2016), via Art Observed

For the past two decades, Robert Irwin’s installation in the Texas town of Marfa has been something of a distant possibility, a long-rumored project commissioned by the Chinati Foundation, and focused around the dilapidated grounds of the former Fort D.A. Russell hospital where the organization makes its home.  Now complete, the massive installation work, Irwin’s only permanent, free-standing composition, has transformed the space into a placid marker of time, a place where meticulous architectural geometries make masterful use of the West Texas sun and landscape in a prime example of Irwin’s unique sculptural vocabulary.

Robert Irwin, Dawn to Dusk (2016), via Art Observed

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Robert Irwin is featured in W Magazine this week, as the artist prepares to open his new permanent installation in Marfa, subtly altering the frame of the Fort D.A. Russell hospital so that its walls and windows play on intersections of structural line and light.  “That’s the main event, all the windows. People think they’re looking for artwork but what they’re actually seeing is beautiful nature,” he says. “I liked the architecture of the fort. All I did was take that form and elaborate it—make the walls thicker, so you get a more substantial physicality to look out of. A real sense of frame.” (more…)

Robert Irwin is profiled in the New York Times this week, as the artist prepares to open his new permanent installation in Marfa, and reflects on the often challenging works he has executed in public space over the past several decades.  “With Bob’s work, I think there’s been a kind of laziness in the art world in terms of understanding exactly what he’s been doing,” says Jessica Morgan, the director of the Dia foundation. (more…)

Robert Irwin has been commissioned for a full-room installation at the Hirshhorn, bringing more than 100ft of scrim to respond to the museum’s uniquely circular architecture.  “The 1960s is a crucial decade in the history of contemporary art, and Irwin’s investigations into the ways our perceptual processes are shaped and framed were at the forefront of the developments unfolding then,” says Evelyn Hankins, the Hirshhorn curator in charge of the exhibition. (more…)

Robert Irwin, 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 (Installation View), via White Cube

White Cube Bermondsey is currently playing home to a slight, albeit impressive exhibition by Robert Irwin, taking the artist’s interest in environmental sculpture, space and light to arguably its most minimal conclusions.  Taking up two rooms at the London Gallery, the exhibition continues Irwin’s exploration of objects in space, and their relationships to the site in which they reside. (more…)

Robert Irwin – Dotting the i’s & Crossing the t’s: Part II (2012), Courtesy Pace Gallery

A pioneer of the Light and Space movement in 1960s Los Angeles, Robert Irwin made monumental contributions to the conceptual art practice, bringing considerations of interrelation, perception, condition and experience into the broader art lexicon.  Continuing an ongoing exploration of Irwin’s 40-year career, the Pace Gallery in New York is currently hosting a large-scale exhibition of new works.

Robert Irwin –Dotting the i’s  & Crossing the t’s: Part I (2012), Courtesy Pace Gallery (more…)

Marian Goodman Gallery, “Ellsworth Kelly,” installation view. All photography courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery unless otherwise noted.

Ellsworth Kelly‘s installation of four 2-panel paintings executed this year is on view at Galerie Marian Goodman in Paris until July 13, 2012. The show, as the gallery’s press release relates, is his first in Paris in 20 years, when his formative paintings made in his youthful residence in the city were exhibited at the Galeries Nationales du Jeu de Paume. This new work comprises four paintings, each consisting of a curved geometrical relief on a white panel, progressing on the ordered spectrum from red, yellow, blue, to green. Laconically hung a single panel to each of the four walls in the gallery, the paintings seem a further distillation of Kelly’s painterly system, a continuation of the experiments he first executed in Paris in his early years.

Marian Goodman Gallery, “Ellsworth Kelly,” installation view

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All photos by Caroline Claisse for Art Observed.

One of the biggest official collateral events of the 54th Venice Biennale is “Venice in Venice.” The exhibition’s fill title is “Venice in Venice: Glow & Reflection – Venice California Art from 1960 to the Present,” organized by Foundation 20 21 and taking place June 1st – July 31st at Palazzo Contarini Dagli Scrigni. Curated by Tim Nye and Jaqueline Miro, the exhibition include works by seminal Southern California artists Peter Alexander, John Altoon, Charles Arnoldi, Billy Al Bengston, Larry Bell, Tony Berlant, Wallace Berman, Vija Celmins, Bruce Conner, Ron Cooper, Mary Corse, Laddie John Dill, Joe Goode, Robert Graham, George Herms, Robert Irwin, Craig Kauffman, John McCracken, Ed Moses,Kenneth Price, Ed Ruscha, and James Turrell.

Curator Jacqueline Miro, Director of the Getty Image Research Institute Andrew Perchuk, and artists exhibiting in the Venice in Venice show.

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Bruce Nauman, Parallax Shell (1971-2000).

Currently on view at the Lehmann Maupin Gallery is The Parallax View, an exhibition curated by Manuel E. Gonzalez exploring the nature of conflict in the works by acclaimed artists Teresita Fernández, Dan Flavin, Gego, Mary Heilmann, Eva Hesse, Robert Irwin, Agnes Martin, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, and Robert Smithson. Centered around the notion of “parallax,” which is defined as “the apparent displacement of an observed object due to a change in the position of the observer,” the exhibition examines how each artist confronts notions of space, light, and observation in their work. Works by such stylistically disparate artists spanning the course of post-war 20th century confront each other through various shapes and forms resulting in an expression of conflict and disharmony.

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