Abigail Levine’s “Choreographing LeWitt” performance (photo by Matthew Bernard, image courtesy the artist and Fridman Gallery, New York)
Most of us only see Sol LeWitt‘s precise, light wall drawings once they’ve already made their mark on the walls, but for the artist, the process of execution was just as, if not more, important. Indeed, each of LeWitt’s drawings comes with a meticulous set of instructions, which can be carried out by anyone.
Starting this Sunday, Abigail Levine is taking up the challenge at Fridman Gallery to delineate the 3,744 lines of LeWitt’s “Wall Drawing #56” (1970) on a 12-by-12-foot square. The entire process will take 25 hours, which she will break down into five-hour sessions over the course of five days. What normally is accomplished by artist assistants behind closed doors will become a public performance.
“Looking again at LeWitt’s wittily concise instructions, I realized they read, without modification, as movement directives,” says Levine, who has been interpreting modern and postmodern visual artworks as scores in her series Re-stagings. To accompany her steady movements at the gallery, sound designer Dave Ruder will amplify the soft sounds of the pencil marks with microphones.
When: Sunday, July 23–Thursday, July 27
Where: Fridman Gallery (287 Spring Street, Soho, Manhattan)
More info here.
