Milwaukee Art Museum
700 N Art Museum Dr - Milwaukee, WI 53202

Information: 414-224-3200

Lawrence Weiner is one of the founders of Conceptual art, a movement that developed during the turbulent 1960s when many societal and artistic norms and conventions were being questioned. Weiner challenged traditional notions concerning the processes and materials that constitute a work of art, employing words to invent a new form of sculpture. His resulting wall installations, which he continues to explore today, reflect incredible creativity and vitality. Weiner’s book Statements, from 1968, is one of the key treatises of the Conceptual art movement. In it he describes the materials, processes, and composition of sculpture in such a way that the text represents or becomes the sculpture itself. This, in turn, became the basis for Weiner’s wall installations. For the piece pictured here, from 2014, Weiner combined graphic design, poetry, drawing, and painting with the scale of a sculpture, bringing a powerful presence to the wall installation. While the imagery of the phrase is concrete, the meaning is open-ended. The artist considers these pieces site-specific and participatory. Weiner visited Milwaukee in 2013 to familiarize himself with the city, while he examined the Santiago Calatrava–designed Windhover Hall—a giant sculpture in itself—as a site for his work. Using scale models of the building, the artist designed two installations for the Milwaukee Art Museum that will be presented in this special exhibition. This exhibition is sponsored by the Contemporary Art Society.