23 September – 24 October 2009
Inaugurating its first American gallery this month, Hauser & Wirth will present Allan Kaprow YARD, revisiting a seminal 1961 work by the revered New York City-born artist and inventor of Happenings and Environments, whose intellectually rigorous site-specific, impermanent works defied commoditization and ultimately gave birth to performance and installation art. Until his death in 2006, Kaprow incorporated improvisation and public participation within and beyond the traditional museum and gallery context, influencing generations of other artists. “Life is much more interesting than art,” he wrote. “The line between art and life should be kept as fluid, and perhaps indistinct, as possible.”
Opening to the public on September 23, 2009, the exhibition will include a dramatic, sprawling reinvention of Yard by prominent performance artist and interventionist William Pope.L, whose piece will fill the entire first floor of Hauser & Wirth New York at the very address where Kaprow’s first version of Yard was presented almost 50 years ago by legendary Martha Jackson Gallery.
Allan Kaprow YARD also includes noted artists Josiah McElheny and Sharon Hayes, each of whom will create unique reinventions of Yard at the Queens Museum of Art and at the New York Marble Cemetery in the East Village of Manhattan, respectively, making the exhibition a larger and more inclusive New York City Happening in the true spirit of Allan Kaprow.
More info:Hauser & Wirth
