ART & LANGUAGE, MICHAEL ASHER, ROBERT BARRY,
IAN BURN, JAN DIBBETS, DOUGLAS HUEBLER,
JOSEPH KOSUTH, LAWRENCE WEINER and IAN WILSON
Curated by OLIVIER MOSSET

September 14 - October 23, 2004

Lobby Display & Video Bar / ALEXANDER COSTELLO

If, as Robert Barry has stated, “conceptual art was the end of modern art,” this exhibition looks at the moment just before this major shift, presenting a show of last paintings produced in the 1960s by the historical group of conceptual artists. Bringing together a group of painted works by ART & LANGUAGE, MICHAEL ASHER, ROBERT BARRY, IAN BURN, JAN DIBBETS, DOUGLAS HUEBLER, JOSEPH KOSUTH, LAWRENCE WEINER and IAN WILSON this exhibition will make manifest the pivotal moment just before these artists dove into a realm of art made of not objects, but of ideas.

“The idea behind this exhibition is to show the last paintings of conceptual artists, who often, before becoming conceptual artists, were abstract painters with works often minimal, sometimes monochromatic,” states OLIVIER MOSSET, the curator of this exhibition. As a painter himself, Mosset is interested in looking at the major change that took place in the visual arts during the 1960s with a move from abstraction to conceptual work. Mosset has worked for over 40 years within painting's particular limitations and with deep appreciation of the power and physicality of color. While considering the issues of ‘relevance’ that art - both painted and conceptual - have faced, this show engages with the various histories of painting’s supposed art historical deaths. Olivier Mosset conceived of ‘Before The End (The Last Painting Show)’ in collaboration with the Swiss Institute – Contemporary Art and was first on view at Le Consortium, Dijon (March 23 - June 19, 2004).

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The S I is pleased to present the work of emerging London-based artist ALEXANDER COSTELLO. Costello will create a new work for the lobby box and present a video series in the video bar. “All You Need To Know Right Now,” is a set of three videos in which the artist records, but does not witness, the destruction of three sets of English apartment complexes. Costello stands resolutely and absurdly, in the tradition of the great performance artists of Britain, as a challenger to the seemingly permanent structures of the gray English landscape. Costello has had recent exhibitions at London’s t1+2artspace, New Zealand’s Physics Room and the Cleveland Institute of Art.

The S I’s phone line ext 17 hosts stories by LAWRENCE WEINER during September.