In the heyday of postminimalism art, Barry Le Va’s work showed at paradigm shifting exhibitions like the Whitney’s “Anti-Illusion” (1969) and MoMA’s “Information” (1970), alongside Bruce Nauman, Richard Serra, Carl Andre, and Robert Morris. Today, however, the septuagenarian’s legacy has faded somewhat as compared to his bold-faced peers. But Le Va gets his due at David Nolan gallery’s booth, where the artist has restaged one of his floor works, composed of thick, rumpled stacks of felt — some strips cut up and shredded — and dozens of scattered outsized metal balls. It isn’t quite clear whom or what has wreaked the havoc — and that’s just the point. Le Va calls upon the viewer to piece together the unseen action, what he refers to as a Sherlock-Holmes aesthetic. This somewhat distinguishes him from his fellow process artists. As author Mike Maizel writes in an excellent excerpt from the 2015 book “Barry Le Va: The Aesthetic Aftermath,” “Though all of these figures championed an aesthetics of disorder as a means of militating against a cultural or intellectual status quo, Le Va’s consideration of the work of art as always already broken — always already vanished – constitutes a more fundamental intervention against the deep-seated metaphysics of singularity, clarity, logic, and presence.” The day of the Art Show opening, the gallery representative on hand reported that they were still deliberating on the price of the work.
March 2, 2016
