When Robert Therrien passed away in 2019 at 71, he left behind a series of small note cards, each bearing a labeled line drawing. To those closest to him, they felt like legends that, if decoded, might reveal something of the elusive artist’s practice. Many feature recurring forms in his work, like a keystone with the words “this is her” scrawled beneath it, or a bent cone titled “this is the path.” But one card stands apart: a paragraph of redacted dashes, followed by the words “this is a story.”
For curator Ed Schad, who organized the forthcoming retrospective “Robert Therrien: This Is a Story” opening at the Broad on November 22, the redacted paragraph encapsulates the paradox at the center of Therrien’s practice. He often made sculptures of familiar objects that resist autobiographical readings, deriving their meaning not from what they disclose, but from what they evoke in the viewer. “On a very visceral level, these objects register as things that Therrien loved and valued,” Schad explained. “But they do so by recalling one’s own love of objects, one’s own narratives and memories from childhood.”