Robert Barry | Untitled

Quint Gallery: ONE is pleased to present a 2008 work by the American conceptual artist Robert Barry, known for his pioneering work in the 1960s and 70s exploring the ways in which language can be used to create meaning.

As a non-material work, the artist permits Untitled Wall Painting to become a site-specific reproduction attuned to the gallery space according to a set of guidelines including content, placement, and color. This type of work, also employed by artists like Lawrence Weiner, Jenny Holzer, and Felix Gonzalez Torres, challenges the relationships between the role of the artist and the perception of an audience.

Floating in a blue-hued space, Barry uses charged words that spark associations and implications depending on who reads them. In this 2008 work, words like SPECIFIC, WITHOUT, UNCERTAIN, DISTURBING, and GOING spread across the wall at different angles. 

Robert Barry was born in the Bronx, New York in 1936 and received his MFA from Hunter College, when the Fine Art program was led by abstract expressionists Robert Motherwell and William Baziotes, and later, Minimalist sculptor/architect Tony Smith. His work has been collected by museums and galleries around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; and the Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid, among others. He was included in the 1972 editions of the Venice Biennale and Documenta, among other major international art exhibitions throughout his career. Barry now lives and continues to make art in Teaneck, New Jersey.