This installation brings together light, space, and time. I like to take into consideration the situation of the words and their place, mood, weather, and the fact that people have to walk around to see the whole thing and physically partake in it. It becomes part of the environment, and hopefully people will be able to interact in an individual and personal way. My work is not isolated within galleries and museums but functions as part of an overall situation, with these ideas extending out into the world. Robert Barry
As one of the pioneers of the Conceptual movement, Robert Barry (b. 1936) makes work that is concerned with the immaterial nature of ideas.
Barry’s art is based on the notion that the idea of an artwork is paramount to the finished product. Barry has worked in a variety of intangible mediums such as electromagnetic fields, telepathic brain waves, ultrasonic sound and invisible gases. His work is continually driven by an interest in the absent or the invisibility of form and early in his career he famously observed that Nothing seems to be the most important thing in the world.
Oftentimes Barry’s interest in the relationship between the words, its context and the public, manifests itself in language. His text based work, encourage viewer participation. By isolating each word and composing the text within physical space, Barry insinuates architectural or psychological context, engaging the viewer in contemplation and personal experience.
Barry has been exhibited in hundreds of solo and group exhibitions. His work is included as permanent installation and in the permanent collections of the world’s most visionary museums and foundations including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Musee d’Orsay, Paris; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Musee National D’Art Moderne, Centre George Pompidou, Paris and the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL.
Robert Barry lives and works in New Jersey.