Whether or not they know it, the many young artists today who make haphazard-looking, improvisational installations owe something to Barry Le Va. A pioneer of the diffuse style known, variously, as “Scatter Art” and “Process Art,” Le Va has dispersed materials such as felt, chalk, flour, and shattered glass across large expanses of floor in a way that looks impulsive but is actually somewhat scripted. (His pieces generally begin with written directives and diagrams.) Le Va has long been admired by critics and art historians (he was included in MoMA’s seminal 1970 group show “Information,” and the ICA Philadelphia gave him a retrospective in 2005), but he’s still not nearly as well-known as his contemporaries Donald Judd and Richard Serra. David Nolan’s ADAA booth, which reprises Le Va’s late-1960s “distributions” of felt, aluminum, and steel in a single installation, should help to raise his profile.
March 1, 2016
