The punctuated lines of this material are pulled across a section of a room, using linearity to create depth and dimension and heightening what the artist describes as the “painfully dynamic and aggressive resistance” of the material.

In dialogue with the contemporaneously emerging field of Postminimal art, Edwards’s barbed wire sculptures explore geometry in suspension. Meanwhile, the material’s evocative referentiality—to a social, agricultural, and militaristic history of containment and bondage—ensures these works resist resolution.

Four of these installations, three of which recently entered Dia’s permanent collection, are on view here for the first time. Together, they interrupt the architectural frame of Dia Beacon, provocatively delineating passageways and obstructing corners.

Melvin Edwards is organized by Alexis Lowry, curator, Dia Art Foundation, with Zuna Maza, curatorial assistant.

Melvin Edwards is made possible by Peter Marino, the David Schwartz Foundation, Inc., and an anonymous donor.