Robert Barry | Almost
Past exhibition
Overview
Quint Gallery is pleased to announce Robert Barry: Almost at 7655 Girard Avenue. The exhibition will be on view for a limited engagement - October 12-26. This show contains Barry’s “word paintings” on canvas, on the wall, and on the floor.
Robert Barry was born in the Bronx, New York in 1936 and in 1963 received his MFA from Hunter College. In 1974, Barry moved to Teaneck, NJ where he has been based since. Around this time he stopped painting, and began making art using invisible media, including electromagnetic energy, ultrasonic radiation, and inert gases. As a pioneer of Conceptual art, the idea of the work and its execution have always been weighted equally. Words and language also began making their way into his artwork both as a return to painting and non-painting. The visual and aesthetic essence of language is now central to the artist’s body of work, using words to encourage associations and an awareness of subjectivity, both bridging gaps and acknowledging space between viewer and artist and object.
Barry’s wall paintings are site-specific reproductions engaged with the architecture of the site according to a set of guidelines including content, placement, and color. Through open-ended instructions informed by subjective decision-making, this work challenges the relationship between the role of the artist and the perception of an audience. In his canvas paintings, charged but unrelated words announce themselves on the surface in varying degrees of legibility and are often easily overlooked. Seeing and looking become intertwined but wholly different processes that serve as an impetus for a viewer to participate in the details of an otherwise monochromatic plane.
Barry’s wall paintings are site-specific reproductions engaged with the architecture of the site according to a set of guidelines including content, placement, and color. Through open-ended instructions informed by subjective decision-making, this work challenges the relationship between the role of the artist and the perception of an audience. In his canvas paintings, charged but unrelated words announce themselves on the surface in varying degrees of legibility and are often easily overlooked. Seeing and looking become intertwined but wholly different processes that serve as an impetus for a viewer to participate in the details of an otherwise monochromatic plane.
Robert Barry’s work has been collected and exhibited 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 many others. He was included in the 1972 editions of the Venice Biennale and Documenta, the 1971 Paris Biennial, among other major international art exhibitions throughout his career. Barry was also the first living artist to have a work permanently installed at the Musée d’Orsay. His work has been in solo shows at the Tate Gallery, London; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Museum of Conceptual Art, San Francisco, California; Kunstmuseum Luzern, Switzerland; Le Consortium, Dijon; Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany; along with countless other institutions and major galleries throughout the world.
Selected Works
