In the Expanded Field: Sculptural Installations since 1970

January 28, 2012 to February 26, 2012

Dana Claxton, Buffalo Bone China, 1997.

Featuring a selection of large scale sculptural installations that date from the 1970s to the present, this exhibition represents the latest themed installment of The Collection on View of the WAG.

Beginning in the early 20th century, artists began producing works comprising multiple objects, composed of traditionally non-artistic materials. A diverse array of artworks appeared, from Marcel Duchamp’s 1917 Fountain (a reoriented urinal) to László Moholy-Nagy’s 1930 Light-Space-Modulator (an early artistic foray into electric light and movement), that questioned the nature of three-dimensional art. These artists drew inspiration from many fields, from sculpture to industrial design and architecture. What the art historian Rosalind Krauss termed “sculpture in the expanded field” challenged the rigidity of previous art historical categories. Out from what she called this “categorical no-man’s-land” emerged what we now identify broadly as installation: multi-disciplinary, often spatially expansive, artworks that defy quick and easy definition.

This exhibition draws on the WAG’s permanent collection, and showcases a selection of sculptural installations by artists like Don Proch, Murray Favro, Dana Claxton, and others. The works in the exhibition provided a crucial reminder of the wide range of objects and practices contemporary art has come to embrace.

Don't miss our other exhibitions contsituting The Collection on View series: Highlights of Inuit Sculpture;  New Art from Cape Dorset; and Contemporary Interventions in the Collection on View.