Another Minimalism

Uta Barth, Larry Bell, Carol Bove, Sarah Braman, Tacita Dean, Olafur Eliasson, Sam Falls, Jeppe Hein, Robert Irwin, Ann Veronica Janssens, Spencer Finch, James Welling

Bringing together the work of a select group of current-generation artists with that of two pioneers of west coast American minimalism, this exhibition examines the impact of California Light and Space art on artists working today.

Robert Irwin and Larry Bell are two of California’s best-known artists. Irwin is renowned for his pursuit of an immaterial and experiential art through a new genre of installation work, and Bell for the fabrication of ethereal geometric objects from optical, colour-bearing new plastics. In this exhibition, two of their signature objects—one of Irwin’s iconic discs and a Larry Bell cube—signal the radical and groundbreaking art made in California in the 1960s and ’70s.

The importance of this art has tended to be overshadowed by the impact of east coast American art of the same vintage. Another Minimalism is among the few exhibitions to recognize and examine the influence of this regional subset of minimalism on leading contemporary artists.

Olafur Eliasson, Spencer Finch, Carol Bove and Ann Veronica Janssens explore the perceptual and psychological aspects of seeing in stripped down, incidental or optical forms, structures and spaces. Their works can cause profound shifts in our perception by the simplest and most transparent of means—coloured light gels, mist, the subtle deployment of after images. These characteristics, along with signature materials of Light and Space art such as the tinted glass, mirror, resins and highly-coloured surfaces used by Jeppe Hein, Sarah Braman and Sam Falls, have migrated into the international art lexicon. Tacita Dean has a more subtle engagement with perception and the slowed-down encounter, both key qualities of Light and Space art, while James Welling and Uta Barth use photography to explore these ideas.

Together, the artists in this exhibition, like those associated with California Light and Space, embrace temporality, instability, liminality and subjectivity. These are the very ways in which California minimalism differs from the literalness, pure objecthood, and materiality of New York’s. Whether the artists do so knowingly or as a result of the absorption of Light and Space into the international artistic ether, the works in Another Minimalism find their historical reflection in California Light and Space art. 

Curator’s talk 
Friday, November 13, 5–6pm
Curator Melissa Feldman talks through the thinking behind Another Minimalism.

Panel discussion
“Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: Light and Space Then and Now”
Thursday, November 19, 4–5:30pm
Artist Neil Clements (Glasgow) and art historians James Boaden (University of York) and Lucy Bradnock (University of Nottingham) discuss the critical reception and legacy of Light and Space Art, considering cultural and geographical contexts, issues of authorship and labour, material practices and phenomenological experience. Chaired by Fiona Anderson (University of Newcastle).

Director’s talk 
Wednesday, February 10, 6–7pm
A chance to hear The Fruitmarket Gallery’s Director Fiona Bradley talk informally about Another Minimalism in the context of The Fruitmarket Gallery’s programme.