Kirby A. Gookin

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  print Summer 1988

  Günther Förg

  Like many of his German contemporaries (Imi Knoebel, Gerhard Richter, the late Blinky Palermo), Günther Förg has been trying to salvage abstract painting from its decorative fate by exploring the material and architectural basis of an image rather than the veneer of its surface. In his first solo exhibition in New York, Förg presented eight paintings on copper and on lead-covered wood panels, and five unique reliefs cast in bronze. The bronze reliefs and the two largest lead paintings were shown in the main room, installed conventionally as individual works, whereas the works in the rear room

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  print May 1988

  Roni Horn

  Over the last two decades, a group of scientists have independently developed a theoretical mode for describing reality, popularly referred to as “chaos theory.” Its proponents have posited a dynamic system that incorporates the nuances and effects of particularization and randomness. These variables that work independently of computable operations were once believed to be inconsequential to science’s approximation of physical systems but are increasingly being recognized as integral to any accurate mathematical or philosophical portrayal of the world.

  A similar theoretical approach underlies

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  print April 1988

  James Lee Byars

  For the past 20 years James Lee Byars has explored the medium of installation, usually incorporating himself into each work. His installations are thus not mere presentations of artifacts. Whether seated in a chair writing questions and reading them aloud to a spectator, or engaged in the ceremonial act of setting sheets of gold leaf on fire at twilight, Byars activates the objects within his surroundings. By including himself as part of the artistic spectacle, he reverses the conventional role of subject/object by inverting the object (that which is beheld) into another subject (a beholder).