Alice Adams, Alice Aycock, Lynda Benglis, Agnes Denes, Jackie Ferrara,
Suzanne Harris, Nancy Holt, Mary Miss, Michelle Stuart, Jackie Winsor
SculptureCenter is pleased to present
Decoys, Complexes, and Triggers: Feminism and Land Art in the 1970s,
organized by guest curator Catherine Morris.
Decoys, Complexes, and Triggers will be on view
May 4–July 28, 2008
with an opening reception on
Sunday, May 4, 4-6pm.
This exhibition focuses on work by women artists who made significant contributions to the development of sculptural practice in the 1970s.
They explored the formal constructs of Post-Minimalism: altering notions of sculptural scale, introducing non-traditional mediums, as well
as adapting unusual landscape and interior sites.
Utilizing an abstract, formal language, the artists in
Decoys, Complexes, and Triggers helped define the structural conventions of
Land Art and Post-Minimalism, such as architectural scale, the use of mathematical systems, and an awareness of the human body in relation
to monumental works of art. The exhibition includes sculpture, models, photographs, drawings video, and other forms of documentation, some
of which has not been shown since its original exhibition. Many of the works in this exhibition contain oblique references to the body,
subjectivity, and self-portraiture.
While some artists in
Decoys, Complexes, and Triggers identified their work as Feminist, many of them, including Alice Aycock,
Jackie Ferrara, and Nancy Holt, explicitly rejected such categorization. This is not to say that these artists were not Feminists, only
that their work was not based in a Feminist ideology and did not draw upon imagery and subject matter common to Feminist art of the time.
They produced work of equal scale, ambition, and critical intentionality as their male peers.
Some work included in
Decoys, Complexes, and Triggers is well known, such as documentation of Agnes Denes'
Wheatfield – A Confrontation (1982),
where the artist planted and harvested a two-acre wheat field in downtown Manhattan (currently Battery Park City). However, much of the work
has not been exhibited in many years, in some cases since the period in which it made, such as Alice Aycock's
Stairs (These Stairs Can Be Climbed) (1974), in which the title of the piece invites the viewer to climb a staircase, monumental in scale,
only to be confronted with the ceiling of the gallery. In spite of its size, the work does not overwhelm the viewer, but rather invites a
responsive, physical relationship. In addition to large-scale sculpture, the exhibition includes models, photographs, drawings, video, and
other forms of documentation.
Reviewing this work now is important. The exhibitions and publications devoted to Feminist art and more generally to art of the 1970s presented
over the past decade have not addressed the significant contributions made by this group of artists. In addition, the critical interest in the
formal issues of current sculptural practice makes a new examination of this radical work timely.
Catherine Morris is New York based independent curator and Adjunct Curator of Contemporary Art at the Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, Okalahoma.
Focusing her independent work on alternative practices of the 1960s and 70s, Morris's projects include:
9 Evenings Reconsidered: Art, Theatre,
and Engineering, 1966 (originating venue: MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts 2006);
Gloria: Another Look At Feminist Art
in the 1970s (originating venue: White Columns, New York, 2002, co-curated with Ingrid Schaffner);
Fort Greene, Brooklyn, A Social and
Architectural History of a Neighborhood (A:D/B Project Space, Brooklyn 2002);
Food (originating venue: White Columns, New York, 1998)
and
Confrontations: The Guerrilla Art Action Group, 1969-1976 (Printed Matter at DIA, New York 1997, co-curated with Steven Harvey). At the
Philbrook Museum, Morris has worked on projects with Josiah McEleheny, Cameron Martin and Lucy Gunning. Morris is a 2004 recipient of a Penny
McCall Foundation Grant for Independent Curating and Writing.
Decoys, Complexes and Triggers: Feminism and Land Art in the 1970s is made possible in part with the support of Jeanne Donovan Fisher.
