John McCracken: Stainless Steel Sculptures
Opening on November 9, the gallery will present recent sculptures by John McCracken. The artist will be showing for the first time at Zwirner & Wirth after exhibiting at David Zwirner in 1997, and Hauser & Wirth in 1999. John McCracken, who lives and works in Medanales, New Mexico, has been a presence in New York steadily since the mid 1960s. During the last two years he has shown his work in London, Zurich, Paris and Los Angeles. His work is currently included in Open Ends at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
At the same time that Minimalist artists such as Carl Andre, Donald Judd, and Dan Flavin were gaining ground with their new abstract work in New York, McCracken was experimenting in Los Angeles with a similar vernacular. McCracken, who started his career as a painter, soon left the constraints of the picture frame towards a more three-dimensional understanding of painting. In particular, his signature work, the plank, literally defines the space between painting and sculpture, the floor and the wall. With his simple gesture of leaning a monochromatic, rectangular resin plank so it rests on the floor and wall, he created a definitive work following the primary concerns of Minimalism: the desire to leave the two dimensionality of the picture plane for a new art that references and includes both architecture and the viewer.