Ocula Conversation Pierre Huyghe: The Artist as Director Pierre Huyghe is a producer of spectacular and memorable enigmas, with works that function more like mirages than as objects. Abyssal Plain (2015–ongoing), his contribution to the 2015 Istanbul Biennial, curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, was installed on the seabed of the Marmara Sea, some 20 metres below the surface of the water and close to...
Ocula Report MoMA Expansion: Once the Modern, Always the Modern 29 Nov 2019 : Mohammad Salemy for Ocula In the early decades of its existence, New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), founded in 1929, transformed from a philanthropic project modestly housed in a few rooms of the Heckscher Building on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street, to an alleged operating node in the United States' cultural struggle during the cold war, and one of the...
Ocula Insight | Video Hans Hartung and Art Informel at Mazzoleni London (1 October 2019-18 January 2020) presents key works by the French-German painter while highlighting his connection with artists active in Paris during the 50s and 60s. In this video, writer and historian Alan Montgomery discusses Hartung's practice and its legacy.Born in Leipzig in 1904, Hans...
Dan Flavin (b. 1933, Jamaica, New York; d. 1996, Riverhead, New York) is an American installation artist and painter famous for creating minimalist sculptures using commercially available fluorescent light tubes. An autodidact, Flavin studied history of art and had very little formal education in painting. After early experiments in the Abstract Expressionist style, Flavin conceived of his Iconsseries in 1961. The Icons consist of incandescent and fluorescent bulbs attached to square, wall-mounted boxes, often made of wood, Formica, or Masonite. In 1963, Flavin exhibited a fluorescent tube placed diagonally on a gallery wall and his mature style was born. Flavin created many installations with fluorescent lighting, notably in Kassel for Documenta 4 (1968) and at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum rotunda in 1971. Flavin disputed descriptions of his work as belonging to the Minimalist movement, yet he remained close friends with Donald Judd, Carl Andre and Sol LeWitt.
After serving in the US Air Force as a technician in Korea (1954–1955), Flavin returned to New York and attended art history classes at the New School for Social Research (1956) and Columbia University (1957–1959). In 1961 he had his first solo exhibition at the Judson Gallery, New York. Flavin exhibited nationally and internationally from 1963 onward: the Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 1966, and the Gemeentemuseum, The Hague, 1968. Flavin's first single large-scale installation was made for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 1967. In 1969 his retrospective exhibition opened at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, travelling to the Vancouver Art Gallery, British Columbia, and to the Jewish Museum in New York City. From its inception in 1974, the Dia Art Foundation acquired numerous works by Flavin and supported larger projects at the Kunstmuseum Basel, 1975; at New York's Grand Central Station, 1977; and a permanent installation at the Baptist Church in Bridgehampton, New York (The Dan Flavin Art Institute), 1983. Permanent installations, completed after his death are at the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas, 1998, and at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas, 2000. Recently a retrospective was held at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., touring to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Hayward Gallery, London, and the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 2004–2007.
Related Press Contemplating perfection and imperfection at Dia:Beacon Hyperallergic : 18 July 2016 A visit last weekend to Dia:Beacon, the vast repository of Minimalist art on the east bank of the Hudson River, brought home once more the complexities and contradictions of a movement whose goal was to be as plain as the nose on your face.It also underscored the ways in which reductivism — whose puritanical bent has been frequently...
Related Press Sharjah’s 'Light Show' sees light in a different dimension The National : 24 September 2015 A world-class art exhibition, spanning five decades of works, is an illuminating experience for visitors in Sharjah. Light Show, at Sharjah Art Foundation which runs until December 5, presents light used in sculptures, as installation, as pure colour and even as optical illusion.Light Show is a travelling exhibition that began in London’s...
Related Press 8 Artist Haunts of Long Island and the Hamptons Paddle 8 : 28 July 2015 Malcolm Gladwell claims that "you can learn as much–or more–from one glance at a private space as you can from hours of exposure to a public face.” If the walls of these coastal homes could talk, we would be endlessly entertained with stories from the private lives of art power couples, from Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner to...
Related Press Hirshhorn Presents Light Works by Dan Flavin Hirshhorn Museum : 14 March 2015 Two iconic works by Dan Flavin (American, b. New York, 1933–1996) from the collection of the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden will be on view through Nov. 15. untitled (to Helga and Carlo, with respect and affection)” (1974) and “‘monument’ for V. Tatlin” (1967) are examples of two of the...
