ROBERT MORRIS
1931-2018, United StatesConsidered one of the most important American artists of the post-war generation, Robert Morris’s interdisciplinary work, which extends from objects, sculptures and drawings, through performances all the way to films and texts, explores the relationship between art, gesture and the body. The artist assumed a visible position in determining both the objectives and the tenor of Minimalism in America in the 1960’s, detaching himself early on from a rigid concept of the work of art as an autonomous object and addressing above all the process of artistic production, which he displayed as an essential component of his works. An involvement with the Judson Dance Theatre in New York during this period gave rise to a significant aspect of his oeuvre: a consideration of the viewer which focuses on the temporal perception of sculpture by means of bodily movement through space. This notion of a self constituted in experience rather than as a contained whole relates to his engagement with post modern dance, an activity where selfhood is neither stable nor constant but emerges in time for both the performers and viewer.
Robert Morris (born 1931 in Kansas City, Missouri, USA) lives and works in New York State. His works have been presented throughout the world in solo exhibitions at institutions including the Whitney Museum, New York, 1970, the Tate Gallery, London, 1971, the Art Institute of Chicago, 1980, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 1986. Morris has presented at documenta 6, 1977, and documenta 8, 1987, as well as in exhibitions at the Venice Biennale in 1978 and 1980. In 1994, the Guggenheim Museum in New York organized the extensive retrospective The Mind/Body Problem, which travelled to the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg and the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris. Recent solo exhibitions include Tate Modern, London, Bodyspacemotionthings, 2009; the Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach, Notes on Sculpture – Objects, Installations, Film, 2009/2010, the Institut Valencia d’Art Modern, Valencia, Drawing As Thinking, 2011 – 2012, and the Asheville Art Museum, Asheville, Robert Morris, 2012-2013, as well as the group exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, London, Move: Choreographing You – Art & Dance, 2010/2011.
Courtesy Sprüth Magers
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