fbpx
Loading Events

Primary SecondaryVolume 1 and 2

  • Archive, Archive Exhibitions, Exhibition

  • June 27, 2008 – August 29, 2008
  • Offsite

This exhibition was housed at the gallery at 28 Holden Street in North Adams as part of the Downstreet Art event in North Adams throughout the summer and fall of 2008.

Volume 1: June 26–July 20

  • Chip Allen
  • Takeshi Arita
  • Lexie Bouwsma
  • Lacey Fekishazy
  • Sara Heinemann
  • Gabriel Hurrier
  • Nick Kozak
  • Roland Lusk
  • Heather Macionus
  • Jordan Starr-Bochicchio

 

Volume 2: July 31–August 29

  • Michael Benjamin
  • Sachiko Cho
  • Megan Dyer
  • John Hogan
  • Aran Jones
  • Sam McCune
  • Tomas Ramberg
  • Nobuto Suga

 

Beginning in March 2008, dozens of artists and draftspeople collaborated to execute nearly 100 massive artworks for Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective, which opened at MASS MoCA on November 16, 2008. A major partnership between the Yale University Art Gallery, the Williams College Museum of Art, and MASS MoCA, this landmark installation surveys forty years of work by Sol LeWitt (1928 – 2007), widely considered one of the most influential artists of the last half-century.

LeWitt — who wrote that “the idea is the machine that generates the art” is regarded as one of the founders of Conceptual art. His wall drawing practice, begun in 1968, was considered especially radical, in part because this new form of drawing was purposely temporal and often executed not by LeWitt but rather by other artists and students whom he invited to assist him.

Twenty-four LeWitt-trained professional drafts people (assisted by thirty-eight apprentices and intern students) worked on the wall drawings at MASS MoCA in a 30,000 square foot building specifically renovated for this project. Many of these studio professionals make their own art independent from their work with the LeWitt studio, some of which was presented in the gallery space at 28 Holden Street over the course of two exhibitions, Primary Secondary Volumes 1 and 2.

Covering a wide range of media and styles, the artists in both groupings began with primary forms such as lines, grids, and fields of color, all of which can be seen in LeWitt’s work. However, it is the secondary layer of elements — such as shifting forms, the use of unorthodox materials, and the infusion of the figure — that pushes the work of these artists off the grid and away from their “day job.”

Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing 880, September 1998
Loopy Doopy (orange and green), acrylic paint