In a career extending over six decades, roving across the United States, artist John Chamberlain (1927–2011) generated an experimental visual world in which color, volume, pressure, and language meet head-on in surprising and potent configurations. He is widely recognized for sculptures made from crushed automobile parts, materials the artist continually revisited throughout his career, though other bodies of work, ranging in scale from monumental to miniature, are composed of foam, foil, resin, paper, air ducts and dismantled appliances, amongst others. Curated by artist Urs Fischer (b. 1973) and developed in collaboration with Dia Art Foundation, THE TIGHTER THEY'RE WOUND, THE HARDER THEY UNRAVEL is the first institutional survey devoted to John Chamberlain in over a decade. Spanning three floors of the museum and arranged in an evocative, cross-temporal mise-en-scène, the exhibition adopts Chamberlain's embrace of discovery and intuitive approach to scale, fit, and attachment. "The key activity in the occupation of art," remarked Chamberlain, "is to find out what you don't know."

Press release courtesy Aspen Art Museum.