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novembre 12, 2021 - Gagosian Gallery

Now Open in New York—Dan Flavin at Park & 75

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NEW YORK, November 12, 2021—Gagosian is pleased to present two sculptures by #danflavin: untitled (to Barnett Newman) two (1971), and untitled (to Sabine and Holger) (1966–71). The dates of the exhibition overlap with those of exhibitions of work by John Chamberlain at 522 West 21st Street and Donald Judd at 555 West 24th Street.

Flavin used widely available fluorescent tube lights to radically alter and rearticulate the space shared by work and viewer while maintaining formal and material consistency from one project to the next. In doing so, he also circumvented the limitations imposed by handwrought armatures, as well as by pedestals and other conventional means of object display. In this way, Flavin—alongside his contemporaries including Carl Andre and Donald Judd—played a key role in directing the course of art making in the 1960s and 1970s toward the eradication of the artist's hand.

In untitled (to Sabine and Holger), Flavin transforms the viewer's experience through what artist Mel Bochner has characterized as "an acute awareness of the phenomenology of rooms." The work both defines the intersection of the walls and masks the darkness of the receding corner. "I knew the actual space of a room could be broken down and played with," Flavin explained, "by planting illusions of real light, electric light, at crucial junctures in the room's composition."

One of four sculptures with the same subtitular dedication, untitled (for Barnett Newman) two was produced for Flavin's solo exhibition at Dwan Gallery, New York, in 1971. The sculptures were intended as memorials to the painter, their color combinations referring to Newman's four-painting series Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue (1966–70). As with untitled (to Sabine and Holger), the work's autonomous formal qualities are impossible to consider independently of the environment with which they interact. Saturating the exhibition space with ambient colored light, untitled (for Barnett Newman) two effectively transforms our perception of the room's internal dynamics without altering its physical structure. Seen together, the two works also underscore Flavin's interest in serial configurations.

Dan Flavin was born in New York City in 1933 and died in Riverhead, New York, in 1996. Collections include the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Museum of #contemporaryart, Los Angeles; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Tate, London; Museo Nacional Centro de #arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent, Belgium; Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels; Musée d'art contemporain de Lyon, France; Kunstmuseum Basel; Ho-Am Art Museum, Seoul; Museum of #contemporaryart Tokyo; and National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan. Major retrospectives have been organized by the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (1969); St. Louis Art Museum (1973); Kunsthalle Basel (1975); Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands (1975); Museum of #contemporaryart, Los Angeles (1989); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1992); Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin (1999); Dia Art Foundation in association with National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (traveled, 2004–07); and Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna (2012, traveled to Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland, 2013). Long-term site-specific installations include Dia:Beacon, NY; Chinati Foundation, Marfa, TX; Menil Collection, Houston; Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Germany; and Kunstmuseum Basel. The #danflavin Art Institute was established in 1983 in Bridgehampton, NY.