Badischer Kunstverein present the first comprehensive exhibition of Nancy Holt in Europe! Since the late 1960s, Holt has created a far-reaching body of work, including Land art, films, photography, sculpture, site-specific installations, artist’s books, and concrete poetry. Curated by Alena J. Williams, this thematic exhibition offers an in-depth look at the early projects of this important American artist whose pioneering work falls at the intersection of art, architecture, and time-based media. Exhibition on view 28 January – 27 March 2011.
Nancy Holt shooting the film Sun Tunnels (1978), 1976. Photo by Lee Deffebach
Sightlines showcases Holt’s transformation of the perception of the landscape through the use of different observational modes in her early films, videos, and related works from 1966 to 1980. Encompassing more than 40 works, as well as photographic and archival materials that have only recently become available, the exhibition illuminates Holt’s circumvention of modernist sculptural practice and institutional spaces. Alongside a number of her significant films, including Sun Tunnels (1978), which documents the creation of her well-known site-specific work of the same name, and Pine Barrens (1975), a meditative reflection on a notoriously vast, undeveloped region in Central New Jersey, the exhibition also features such seminal collaborative videos as Boomerang (1974, with Richard Serra) and East Coast/West Coast (1969, with Robert Smithson).
Long before Holt began working in either film or video, the relationship between visual and auditory elements took on particular significance in her work. Emerging from conceptual and minimalist approaches, Holt’s audio tours, sculptures, and extensive Locator series, the documentation of which is also on view, offer a novel means for observing natural phenomena and built space. On the occasion of this presentation in Karlsruhe, the artist will develop a new, site-specific audio work responding to the architecture and infrastructure of the Kunstverein.
Nancy Holt: Sightlines is based on an exhibition originated and circulated by the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, New York. Major support for the development and presentation of the original project was provided by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.
It coincides with the first retrospective publication of Holt’s 45-year career. Published by the University of California Press (February 2011), it includes contributions by Pamela M. Lee, Lucy Lippard, Nancy Holt, Ines Schaber, Matthew Coolidge, James Meyer, and Julia Alderson.
Nancy Holt was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1938, and now lives in Galisteo, New Mexico. She is the recipient of five National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, two New York Creative Artist Fellowships, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Holt’s work has been presented at a number of international institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., the Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, and the Tate Modern in London.
Artist’s Lecture by Nancy Holt
25 January, 7 pm
Auditorium, Karlsruhe State Academy of Fine Arts
Reinhold-Frank-Strasse 67, Karlsruhe
Film Program: “Site Recordings”
Curated by Alena J. Williams
A collaboration with the Kinemathek Karlsruhe
studio 3, Kaiserpassage 6, Karlsruhe
Reservations: +49 (0)721.937 47 14
23 February, 9.15 pm
Hardcore (Walter De Maria, 1969)
Land Art (Gerry Schum, 1969)
25 February, 7 pm
Swamp (Nancy Holt & Robert Smithson, 1971)
Pine Barrens (Nancy Holt, 1975)
Sun Tunnels (Nancy Holt, 1978)
27 February, 9.15 pm
Spiral Jetty (Robert Smithson, 1970)
Valley Curtain (Albert & David Maysles, Ellen Hovde, 1973)
James Turrell: Passageways (Carine Asscher, 2006)
PREVIEW:
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM
Jacob Dahl Jürgensen & Simon Dybbroe Møller
with Eleanor Vonne Brown, Kerstin Cmelka, Raphael Danke, Jens Carl Daugbjerg, Michele Di Menna, Daniel Müller-Friedrichsen, Emily Wardill
11 February – 27 March 2011
Opening: 10 February 2011, 7 pm
Opening hours
Tuesday to Friday 11 am – 7 pm
Saturday, Sunday and Holidays 11 am – 5 pm
Badischer Kunstverein
Waldstraße 3
D – 76133 Karlsruhe
Germany
[email protected]
www.badischer-kunstverein.de