To start the fall season, Konrad Fischer Galerie presents two solo exhibitions of Sol LeWitt's Wall Drawings at both its locations in Berlin and Dusseldorf. Colored wall drawings will be shown in Dusseldorf, black and white versions are on view in Berlin. Complementary to these installations, a selection of gouaches by the artist will be presented.
LeWitt began his artistic career in the early 1960s with modular and serial constructions. He used repetition and the progression of simple three-dimensional geometries to place his works on a rational foundation, to make them straightforward and repeatable. His aim was to abolish the inevitable illusionism of the painted surface as well as to oppose its implicit claim to the uniqueness of the manually executed work.
Later, LeWitt developed the medium of the wall drawing as a means of returning to the surface while still avoiding the problems of painting. He eliminated the physical support that usually lies between the exhibition wall and the artistic markings and places them in an ideal space of their own. Conversely, he sought to ensure that the drawn traces would not stand out from the wall but form a single visual entity with it.
From his own perspective, LeWitt succeeded, with his wall drawings, in solving a whole series of problems that had plagued art, especially painting, and in opening up a broad new field of activity for himself. He avoided the illusionism, expressiveness, and narrativity of painting. He excluded moments of perception from the work’s production, negated the importance of artistic execution, and left the work’s realization to others, without calling his own position as “author” into question.
Konrad Fischer Galerie Dusseldorf shows Wall Drawings #317, #319, #322 and #622. In Berlin the Wall Drawings #314, #318 and #726 are installed on the ground floor while „Complex Form #46“, a sculpture from 1989, is exhibited on the first floor.
Ulrich Loock, August 2015
Translation: James Gussen
