James Lee Byars

Pirelli HangarBicocca presents the exhibition of James Lee Byars, one of the most enigmatic and legendary figures in 20th-century art. The show, the first retrospective in Italy dedicated to the American artist since his death in 1997, journeys through his layered work, which developed as a continuous exploration of the deepest meanings of the existing world, poised between mysticism, spirituality, and corporality.

The retrospective of works by James Lee Byars (Detroit, Michigan, 1932–Cairo, 1997), curated by Vicente Todolí and organized by Pirelli HangarBicocca and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, is held in the Navate spaces at Pirelli HangarBicocca. Bringing together a vast selection of sculptural works and monumental installations created from 1974 to 1997, and coming from international museum collections, it features works that have rarely been exhibited, and that are presented in Italy for the first time. Realized with the support from the Estate of James Lee Byars, the exhibition at Pirelli HangarBicocca also emerges from the close relationship that existed between the artist and Vicente Todolí, who curated two of his solo shows, at the IVAM Centre del Carme in Valencia in 1994 and at the Museu Serralves in Porto in 1997, where Todolí was a former director.

James Lee Byars, one of the most widely recognized American artists from the 1960s to the present, influenced an entire generation of artists in the fields of conceptual and performance art. Born in Detroit in 1932, Byars was always fascinated by Japanese culture, which exerted a deep influence on his artistic practice throughout his life. He lived and worked nomadically, moving between different places and cities, including Detroit, Kyoto, New York, Los Angeles, Berlin, Bern, Venice, and Cairo. Throughout his oeuvre, Byars combined motifs and symbols from Eastern traditions and civilizations, such as elements of Nô theater and Zen Buddhism, with a deep knowledge of Western art and philosophy, offering a unique personal view on reality and its physical and spiritual entities. Making use of different media, like installation, sculpture, performance, drawing, and speech, the artist created a mystical-aesthetic reflection on the ideas of perfection and cyclicity, and on the human figure—its representation and dematerialization—often involving visitors directly in temporary actions or large-scale interventions.

Pirelli HangarBicocca’s retrospective to James Lee Byars gathers large-scale works, in which precious and refined materials, such as marble, silk, gold leaf, and crystal, are harmoniously combined with minimal and archetypal geometries, like prisms, spheres, pillars, and Baroque-like objects, in a play of symbolic and aesthetic cross-references between form and content. Beginning with multiple allegorical and formal meanings of matter, the exhibition dwells on themes that have run through the artist’s practice such as the search for perfection, doubt as an approach to existence and the finitude of the human being, inviting visitors to reflect on the alchemical potentialities of art to shape reality.

A monographic catalog will be produced in conjunction with the retrospective, scheduled for release in December 2023 and published by Marsilio Editori. The volume will include a text by Jordan Carter, art historian, and curator of the DIA Art Foundation, New York; an essay by art historian Sakagami Shinobu; a text by Alexandra Munroe, art historian and Senior Curator at the Solomon R.Guggenheim Museum; a joint contribution by the artist Maurizio Nannucci, with whom Byars had a long relationship and correspondence, and Gabriele Detterer; and an introduction by the exhibition curator Vicente Todolí. The book will be completed by detailed entries of the works on display, an in-depth chronology of the artist, and extensive photographic documentation of the retrospective.

Program
Lecture by curator Stephan Köhler: October 26, 7–9pm
Conversation with curator Els Hoek: January 11, 7–9pm
Performance program by James Lee Byars: February 8–10

Pirelli HangarBicocca an institution founded in 2004, was relaunched in 2012 by Pirelli, which has been a founding partner since its inception. In recent years the exhibition space has consolidated its role as an art center, attracting an international audience with shows that stand out for their high curatorial standards and great visual impact, and thanks to its offer of unique exhibition projects. The spaces of Pirelli HangarBicocca also host the permanent installation The Seven Heavenly Palaces 2004–2015 by Anselm Kiefer, which has become a reference point for visitors from all over the world, and the sculpture La Sequenza (1981) by Fausto Melotti.