On Saturday, April 25, the gallery will open with an exhibition entitled "Conceptual Photography from the 60's and 70's".
The show will examine conceptual photographic practices as they evolved in the United States as well as in Europe from the 1960's through the mid-1970's. At a time when many artists began to embrace a range of media to express themselves, the use of photography was reexamined. Rather than record or aestheticize nature and the modern condition as did many of the great photographers during the earlier part of the century, photography now became a tool to express and document various conceptual approaches. Many of the artists whose work is included in this exhibition share a common interest in performance as well as in sculpture. Another common thread among these artists is their investigation into the structure and functions of language.
For this exhibition, the gallery has tried to bring together the earliest examples of these new conceptual practices. We have also selected those artists whose works continue to resonate from the early days of conceptual art into the present, and who have created historic bodies of work that are points of references for any artist making idea-based work today. A lot of the works on exhibit were originally shown in Europe and have never been seen in the United States, an irony as most of the artists in this exhibition are actually American. However, the audience for conceptual photography in the 1960's and 1970's was primarily European.
Artists included in the exhibition are: Vito Acconci; John Baldessari; Bernd & Hilla Becher; Robert Cumming; Hamish Fulton; Gilbert & George; Dan Graham; Michael Heizer; Douglas Huebler; Joseph Kosuth; Barry Le Va; Richard Long; Gordon Matta-Clark; Mario Merz; Bruce Nauman; Robert Smithson; and William Wegman.