Intro
What Absence Is Made Of
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC
18 October 2017–21 March 2020
Content
Selected from the Hirshhorn’s permanent collection this exhibition explored works that demonstrate how artists use absence as a means of expression. Including stellar works from the collection by artists such as Ana Mendieta, John Baldessari, and Fred Sandback, the show also highlights new acquisitions by Annette Lemieux, Ed Atkins, and Huang Yong Ping. In their search to represent what is not, these artists harken back to a long tradition of conveying transcendental ideas through art—a tradition which includes art forms as disparate as religious icons and abstract paintings.
What Absence Is Made Of charts the rising appeal of immateriality in reaction to a world increasingly dominated by materialism. The exhibition begins with a seminal 1966 work from conceptual art pioneer Joseph Kosuth’s First Investigations series in which the artist presented facsimiles of dictionary entries as works of art. Building on strong conceptual art holdings in the Hirshhorn’s collection, in part due to the 2007 acquisition of a number of major works from the famed Panza Collection, the exhibition leads us through an exploration of artistic concerns that have come to the fore since the 1960s: dematerialization, disembodiment, tabula rasa, memento, and the posthuman body.
Artists:
Giovanni Anselmo, Ed Atkins, John Baldessari,Christian Boltanski, Louise Bourgeois, AA Bronson, Bruce Conner, Cyprien Gaillard, Hans Haacke, Ann Hamilton, Damien Hirst, Donald Huebler, On Kawara, Joseph Kosuth, Annette Lemieux, Inge Mahn, Ana Mendieta, Robert Moskowitz, Reynier Leyva Novo, Doris Salcedo, Fred Sandbeck, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Didier Vermeiren, Siebren Versteeg, Huang Yong Ping