Barry Edward Le Va - Post-minimalism and Process Art

 

 Barry Edward Le Va (1941 – 2021) was an American sculptor and installation artist. Trained in his native California, he lived and worked in New York City. Le Va was among the leading figures of post-studio and process art to have emerged in the late 1960s. His abstract sculptures, installations, drawings, and editioned works are featured in major art collections around the world.
Le Va's pioneering scatter pieces on the floor, started in 1966, made him one of the first of the so-called Process artists. In 1969, he started to create works with cleavers serially embedded in walls or floors.More recently, he produced monumental abstract works and site-specific installations.
In 2005, Le Va's work was the subject of a major retrospective exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (ICA).The exhibition, Accumulated Vision, Barry Le Va, was accompanied by the publication of a comprehensive monograph of the artist's work. The ICA described Le Va's work as: "Since the late 1960s, the American artist Barry Le Va has used broken glass, meat cleavers, wool felt, ball bearings, powdered chalk, cast concrete, paper towels, linseed oil, a typewriter and a gun, among other things, to make his art. Part of a generation intent on knocking art off its pedestal, Le Va claimed the floor as his field of operations by scattering massive amounts of materials, or forms, to create works which he called "distributions." Apparently random, even chaotic, these installations are in fact premeditated and executed according to plan. Not surprisingly, drawing plays a significant role in the work of this artist whose formative training is in architecture. Le Va's distributions make him one of the leading practitioners of Post-minimalism and Process Art. But his own, preferred frame of reference comes not from recent art history, but from mystery novels. He has likened his installations to crime scenes and invites viewers to look for clues to reconstruct the, often violent, act or concept that underlies the..Wikipedia

 

 

 

Bill Bollinger - Post Minimalism Art

Bill Bollinger (July 15, 1939 – May 27, 1988) was an American artist. In the late 1960s, he was one of the foremost sculptors of his time, routinely mentioned in the same breath as the likes of Bruce Nauman, Robert Smithson, Eva Hesse and Richard Serra. His work can be categorized as minimalist or postminimalist art..In his works, Bill Bollinger made frequent use of standard industrially fabricated products. The artist explained his approach: “I only do what it is necessary to do. There is no reason to use color, to polish, to bend, to weld, if it is not necessary to do so.”For the Channel Pieces from 1965 to 1968, he joined together extruded aluminum profiles to create works with additive and rhythmic properties. These were followed by the Pipe Pieces made from aluminum pipes held together with fittings and the Rope Pieces, consisting of a rope stretched between two terminal points within the exhibition space. In the Cyclone Fence Pieces, Chain-Link Fence Pieces, Wire Pieces and Screen Pieces from 1968 and 1969, Bollinger utilized commercially available wire mesh and netting. They allowed him to lend expression to the painterly and graphic questions of space and the fundamental laws of physics. Four works from 1968 – a Rope Piece, a Wire Piece and two Pipe Pieces – were included in the legendary 1969 exhibition “Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form” curated by Harald Szeemann at Kunsthalle Bern.In the Graphite Pieces (1969–1970), Bollinger spread graphite dust over the floor, leaving clear traces of the process of creation while incorporating the sense of openness and expandability that was so important to Bollinger. The ready-made character of Bollinger’s works is especially apparent in the Droplights (hanging lamps) from 1969. Later works with floating tree trunks and barrels show Bollinger’s affinity for water. In 1973, he began working in cast iron.  Wikipedia