DIANA THATER

As the 1990s were ending, Diana Thater’s work was evolving from concerns about structuralism to matters of colour in space. With this shift she employed architectural renderings and collage to work through various possibilities of large-scale, colour-saturated projections and monitor installations. These works capture an active mind formulating exhibitions at Tensta Konsthall and Hamburger Bahnhof, installations at the Beyler Foundation, Basel and the 99/2000 Carnegie International, and commissions in Vancouver or Pittsburgh.

‘I’m always working with multiple, simultaneous perspectives—both literally, in the installation, and figuratively, in the image.’

Drawings 1999-2006 pulls together these critical yet playful works as a further means to understand Thater’s practice.

Over the past decade, Diana Thater’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at prominent institutions that include the LUMA, Arles (2025); LUMA Westbau, Zurich (2025); Institute of Contemporary Art Watershed, Boston, Massachusetts (2018); Aspen Art Museum, Colorado (2015); San Jose Museum of Art, California (2015); Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane (2011); Santa Monica Museum of Art, California (2010); Kunsthaus Graz, Austria (2009); Natural History Museum, London (2009); Kunsthalle Bremen, Germany (2004); Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen, Germany (2004); Dia Center for the Arts, New York (2001); Secession, Vienna (2000); The Museum of Modern, New York (1997); and The Renaissance Society, Chicago (1995). In 2017, the solo show A Runaway World was first exhibited at The Mistake Room, Los Angeles and later traveled to Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul and the Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain. In 2015, a comprehensive mid-career survey of Thater’s work, The Sympathetic Imagination, was organised by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and later traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.

Work by the artist is represented in museum collections worldwide, including the LUMA Foundation, Arles; Art Institute of Chicago; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Castello di Rivoli, Turin; Friedrich Christian Flick Collection im Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; San Jose Art Museum, San Jose; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.