Simon Fraser University
Engaging the World

^{A Selection from the Vancouver Art Gallery Archive of Lawrence Weiner Posters, installation view, 2012, SFU Gallery. Photo: Blaine Campbell.}

Lawrence Weiner: A Selection from the Vancouver Art Gallery Archive of Lawrence Weiner Posters

January 7 – February 18, 2012
SFU Gallery

Lawrence Weiner has made art from words since the 1960s. The posters for his exhibitions and projects that constitute this show at SFU are part of Weiner’s exploration of the intersection between language, art and the material world. This exhibition explores the beauty of Weiner’s design conceptions as well as the text propositions that the posters were meant to convey.

Making art from words, or introducing and making words into art, are the two polarities of text-based Conceptual practice. Conceptualism’s texts had their origin in ideas for potential art and, as Lawrence Weiner has said many times, “The work may not be built,” it may exist as an idea and it is ideas and their relation to the material world that are important in Weiner’s work. Additionally, his texts are sculptures that carve space with words—they are glyptographic as well as typographic. The carved letter text on the façade of the Vancouver Art Gallery (facing Robson Street) is an example of Weiner’s words placed as a permanent installation. Perhaps more than any other contemporary artist, Lawrence Weiner has brought viewers into the processes by which works of art may be (or may not be) realized.

Curated by Bill Jeffries.

Events

Opening Reception: Saturday, January 7, 2012, 3–5pm.

Panel Discussion: Art & Words/Words & Art
Speakers: Grant Arnold, Kyla Mallett, Kim Nguyen and Ian Wallace
Saturday, January 7, 2012, 2–3 pm
Room AQ 3003 (the lecture hall next to SFU Gallery)

Lunchtime Tours of the Exhibition
Wednesday, January 11 – Friday, January 13, 12:05pm and 12:35pm