Blind Time

Mini-Retrospecitve of  Robert Morris

9 May – 16 June at Lance Fung Gallery, 537 Broadway

Reception for the artist:  Wednesday, 9 May, 6 – 8 PM

Blind Time is a mini-retrospective of drawings by Robert Morris which began 28 years ago.  The reception for the artist opens on May 9th at Lance Fung Gallery and will celebrate the gallery’s fifth anniversary. Since the seminal Blind Time I drawing series initiated in 1973, Morris has continued the task of re-defining drawing for himself with six complete Blind Time series to date.  The most recent series was completed in 2000.  Two drawings from each of the following series will be presented:

Blind Time I,  1973

Morris discovered a new drawing technique; the process of working blindfolded.  This method not only led between the Scylla of the abstract and Charybdis of the ironic, but opened another space that was at once conceptual and highly physical.  Working on a size that the body could reach with outstretched arms and using only his hands blackened with powdered graphite or graphite mixed with plate oil, Morris set himself simple tasks involving varying pressures of rubbing, estimated distances, opposed or inverse hand movements, mnemonic tests, etc.

Blind Time II,  1976

In this series a woman blind from birth executed the drawings under Morris’s supervision.

Blind Time III,  1985

While continuing to extend the production of the Blind Time works via a priori physical tasks, a number of works in this series allude to the physics of light, the cosmological, physiological aspects of the eye and literal blindness.

Blind Time IV,  1991

Each work of this extensive series quotes the American language philosopher Donald Davidson.  Revolving around issues of agency, event, action, metaphor, etc., the Davidson excerpts resonate to the issues implicit in Morris’ investigations.

Blind Time V,  1999

The most personal, smallest in scale and fewest in number, these works change materials (ink on plastic film rather than paper).  Morris works over three pre-inscribed geometric elements that recall Durer’s famous print.  The prominent textural elements recall biographical incidents from the artist’s life.

Blind Time VI,  2000

Extending the range and scale of the materials used in series five, these works elevate the linguistic element to a greater visual prominence.  The format of the small textural notations that appear in the first four series are here written in reverse and virtually unreadable without a mirror.  These largely inaccessible reflections on issues of mortality and innateness allow the enlarged caption/title of each drawing to work against the graphic and plastic elements of the drawing.