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Beyond the Studio
By 1970, Irwin's questions had gravitated away from the conventions of art in favor of exploring the broader cross-disciplinary realms of perceptual experience. His expanding field of inquiry was encouraged by unique opportunities he had to collaborate with engineers and scientists, such as the Art and Technology Program, a project of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art that paired artists with local industries. After considerable reflection, Irwin concluded that his art practice could no longer comprise discrete objects. Instead, it would be conditional -- circumscribed only by the limits of the artist's inquiry, with each project developing in response to the unique qualities of a given situation. Abandoning his studio, Irwin began to pursue what he called a "project of general peripatetic availability," in which he accepted any invitation, whether for a lecture, artwork, or simply a discussion. Each opportunity allowed the artist not only to query his own presumptions and responses but also to engage others. Thus what had begun more than a decade before as a private consideration of the nature of art became an open-ended dialogue, one no longer driven solely by the artist.
Forty-five years later, Robert Irwin's steadfast commitment to a conditional practice is exemplified by the large-scale installation in the next gallery, Square the Circle. Created in response to the Hirshhorn's unique architecture, this project continues Irwin's inquiry while pointing to the vital legacy of the artist's object-based perceptual experiments from the 1960s. Together, the historical works and the new installation represent a phenomenological reduction, a bracketing process in which an individual aims to suspend theoretical or abstract knowledge in favor of concrete, lived experience. |