Louisiana-born sculptor and performance and video artist Keith Sonnier was a pioneer of post-Minimalist sculpture in the late 1960s. Experimenting with new materials, particularly neon lights, he helped to re-invent Minimalism for a contemporary era.
Read MoreReceiving a BA from the University of Southwestern Louisiana in 1963, Sonnier went on to complete an MFA at Rutgers University's Douglass College in 1966. After graduation, the artist joined post-Minimalist contemporaries such as Eva Hesse, Barry Le Va, Bruce Nauman, Richard Serra, Richard Tuttle, Joel Shapiro, and Jackie Winsor in calling into question established conventions of sculpture.
Keith Sonnier's artwork incorporates a wide variety of unconventional commercial materials, from latex, foam rubber, and satin, to found objects, video, and ephemeral radio waves and satellite feeds. In 1968 Sonnier began utilising electric light in his works and discovered the defining material of the rest of his career: neon. He began to feature the material in wall sculptures that combined sheer fabrics with light, turning to neon and argon tubes when he became dissatisfied with the limitations and inflexibility of incandescent light.
The linear quality and flexibility of neon-filled tubes gave Sonnier the freedom to draw solely with light and colour. Starting with his early gallery neon works, the artist utilised the diffused nature of neon light for complex colour interactions against various materials and constructed plains. The artist drew various ideas from these earlier neon works into career-spanning series, such as the seminal 'Ba-O-Ba' (1969–2020), which evolved over more than 50 years.
From the 1980s Keith Sonnier began working on large public projects, completing more than 20 public commissions between 1981 and his death, for locations including airports, government buildings, and corporate headquarters world-wide. His Motordom (2004) illuminates the courtyard of the Los Angeles Caltrans District 7 Headquarters in a red neon and blue argon pattern based on a computerised sequence. The installation is one of the city's largest public art commissions.
The multi-award-winning artist features in major public collections across the globe, including the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; and the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.
Keith Sonnier: 'Light Works', Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Nice (2015); BA-O-BA LEVER HOUSE, Lever House, New York (2008); Keith Sonnier: BA-O-BA Berlin, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2002); Keith Sonnier: Neon, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. (1989); Keith Sonnier, Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (1984); Projects: Keith Sonnier, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1971).
American Masters 1940–1980, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (2018); The American Dream: Pop to the Present, British Museum, London (2017); FORTY, MoMA PS1, New York (2016); The New Sculpture 1965–1975: Between Geometry and Gesture, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1990); Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form, Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland (1969).
Michael Irwin | Ocula | 2020
