BOLDTYPE ISSUE #59: Artwork By
Lawrence Weiner
The cover of this issue of Boldtype is a detail of an installation photograph of AS LONG AS IT LASTS, a characteristic work by American conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner. The shot was taken at Flux News, an exhibition that formed part of 2001's Trimestrial d'art contemporain in Liège, Belgium, and features in Lawrence Weiner: AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE, a monograph published by Yale University Press. The book is a comprehensive guide to Weiner's multifarious practice and is also the catalogue to a touring retrospective that opened at the Whitney Museum of American Art in November 2007.
The lettering in this version of AS LONG AS IT LASTS has been applied directly to the gallery wall, a technique that Weiner has frequently used since the early '70s. The adoption of verbal language as a vehicle for sculptural ideas allows the artist to describe a potentially infinite range of visual and material phenomena without the necessity of presenting actual images or objects. Weiner does, however, employ an elegant graphic style and pays close attention to placement and context (note the painting just visible behind the column). Here, the large scale of the type lends a visual heft, while the stencil-style font emphasizes the temporary state to which the statement seems, poetically, to allude.
Born in the Bronx in 1942, Weiner now lives in Manhattan and Amsterdam. His recent solo exhibitions and projects have taken place in institutional, commercial, and public spaces in Munich, Hong Kong, Lisbon, Miami, London, and Mexico City. Weiner has been included in numerous biennials and other regular international exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale, Manifesta, Skulptur Projekte Münster, and documenta. He has published numerous books and has produced several films and videos, including the 2008 adult movie Water in Milk Exists. His AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE retrospective concludes its tour at K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf, Germany, where it is on view from September 20, 2008 to January 4, 2009.
- Michael Wilson
