William Anastasi

New York, March 15, 2007 – The Drawing Center is pleased to announce Raw, a solo exhibition by William Anastasi on view in the Drawing Room from April 21 through July 21, 2007. For this exhibition, the artist will recreate seminal site-specific works dating from the mid-1960s. These early pieces are a testament to the artist's pioneering efforts and ongoing interest in chance-based process, site-specificity, and the physicality of drawing. The artworks incisively explore the nature and definition of drawing through different strategies – pouring, throwing, propping – bringing to the surface questions of material and the relationship between line and support. By focusing on a key facet of Anastasi’s expansive approach to the medium of drawing, the exhibition aims to contribute to the critical reconsideration of his role within the historical development of Conceptual practice and early Minimalism art.

Highlights from the exhibition include two untitled works from 1966: to make the first of these sitespecific pieces, Anastasi throws one gallon of industrial high gloss enamel against a wall, the resulting form created by the momentum of the artist’s body; in a related piece, the artist pours the paint from near the seam between ceiling and wall, the force of gravity replacing the vitality of the artist’s gesture as determinant. The artist’s Untitled (1965) creates a similar linear composition from a short diagonal wooden beam holding up a longer one against the surface of the wall. The Drawing Center will feature a new version of the same work fabricated in aluminum. The hot-rolled steel plate of Sink (1963) uses surface tension to collect water poured daily on its surface, which begins to rust and thus change form as the materials interact over time. The exhibition will also feature small scale drawings related to works of the same era (and to those on view in the Drawing Room), shedding light on the artist’s process and linking these site-specific installations to their conception over forty years ago.

William Anastasi was born in Philadelphia in 1933 and has lived and worked in New York since the early 1960s. Widely considered to be a pioneer in the history of Conceptual art, Anastasi has worked in painting, sculpture, collage, photography, and drawing for over four decades. His work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions worldwide and is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museet for Samtidskunst, Roskilde, Denmark; and Diözesanmuseum Köln, Cologne, Germany; among many others.

William Anastasi: Raw