PARIS.- Gagosian is presenting two floor sculptures and a set of related drawings by Walter De Maria. This is the first solo exhibition of De Maria’s work at Gagosian Paris, and it has been prepared in collaboration with the estate of Walter De Maria.
A vanguard force within four major art historical movements—minimalism, conceptual art, land art, and installation art—De Maria’s oeuvre uses mathematical absolutes and elements of the sublime to push the boundaries of the traditional white cube. In the early 1990s, De Maria conceived of, and partially constructed, Truth / Beauty, a series of fourteen sculptures in seven pairs. Completed after De Maria’s death by the Estate according to his vision, the series expands upon his use of permutations of rods, polygons, and numerical sequences intended to be viewed in a counterclockwise progression. Each pair consists of two arrangements of four rods placed upon granite bases: one composition is a chevron pattern and the other resembles an “X.” Each base has TRUTH and BEAUTY engraved on opposite sides. The first pair comprises 5-sided rods, and the rods increase by 2 sides with each successive couple, culminating in 17-sided rods. The granite bases and steel rods were on view earlier this year at Gagosian London, but in Paris the arrangement has been configured specifically for the Le Bourget gallery and its mezzanine passerelle. The sculpture can be seen from the ground as well as from above, recalling the 1981–82 installation of De Maria’s 360° I Ching / 64 Sculptures at Centre Georges Pompidou, when the rods were arranged within a sunken area of the museum lobby floor and could only be viewed from the mezzanine level.
The Large Rod Series: Circle/Rectangle 11 (1986) consists of eleven 11-sided, hand-welded and polished stainless steel rods. It is part of a series of rod floor sculptures from the 1980s, each pertaining to an odd number, from 5 to 13. For this particular work, there are three possible layouts: a large rectangle, a short rectangle and a circle; here it has been configured in the short rectangle format. It occupies a room adjacent to the main gallery and has been installed atop a nineteenth century Indian Agra carpet, a juxtaposition inspired by the artist’s 1986 exhibition of the same floor sculpture on an Afghan carpet.
The earliest work in the exhibition is a series of drawings, The Pure Polygon Series (1975–76). This includes seven hand-drawn pencil drawings that begin with a triangle and follow with six additional shapes in succession. Faintly traced lines on 36-inch square American etching paper encourage intimate viewing, a level of physical engagement akin to that motivated by De Maria’s sculpture.
Walter De Maria was born in 1935 in Albany, California, and died in 2013 in Los Angeles. His work is collected by public institutions including The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Dia Art Foundation, New York; MUMOK, Vienna; Magasin III, Stockholm; Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Menil Collection, Houston; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri; and Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. Recent solo exhibitions include “Walter De Maria: The 2000 Sculpture,” Kunsthaus Zürich, Switzerland (1992, traveled to Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, in 2000; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California, in 2012); “Walter De Maria: 1999 Milano 2000,” Fondazione Prada, Milan (1999–2000); “Walter De Maria Retrospective,” Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome (2003); and “Walter De Maria: Trilogies,” The Menil Collection, Houston (2011).
De Maria’s permanent installations around the world include The New York Earth Room (1977), New York; The Broken Kilometer (1979), New York; The Lightning Field (1977), Quemado, New Mexico; The Vertical Earth Kilometer (1977), Kassel; Monument to the Bicentennial of the French Revolution 1789–1989 (1989–90), Assemblée Nationale, Paris; Large Red Sphere (2002), Türkentor, Kunstareal München, Munich; and Time/Timeless/No Time (2004), Chichu Art Museum, Naoshima. His sculpture Apollo’s Ecstasy (1990) was included in the 55th Biennale di Venezia in 2013.
On view at the Dallas Museum of Art is “Counterpoint” (October 19, 2016–January 22, 2017), an exhibition presenting De Maria’s Large Rod Series: Circle/Rectangle, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13 (1986) alongside El Greco’s Saint Francis Kneeling in Meditation (1605–10). This unique pairing is also accompanied by a programmed recording of Cricket Music (1964), one of De Maria’s rare musical compositions.
The Palmette and Cloudband Agra Carpet (19th century, 1st half) has been generously loaned by the Moshe Tabibnia Gallery, Milan.For further inquiries please contact the gallery at paris@gagosian.com or at +33.1.75.00.05.92. All images are subject to copyright. Gallery approval must be granted prior to reproduction.
