Steidlville

This book examines a seminal early exhibition of work by Dan Flavin that took place in 1964 at New York’s influential (though short-lived) Green Gallery. This exhibition was groundbreaking not only in terms of its presentation of radically innovative work that used commercially-available, colored fluorescent light, but also because it marked a turning-point in Flavin’s career. The Green Gallery show was the first exhibition in which the artist presented only fluorescent light pieces, and it included such important works as the diagonal of May 25, 1963 (to Robert Rosenblum), 1963; a primary picture, 1964; and the nominal three (to William of Ockham), 1963. It marked the development of the language of illumination that would characterize Flavin’s influential work until his death in 1996, and is therefore considered by many to be one of the key gallery exhibitions of the 1960’s.

Dan Flavin: The 1964 Green Gallery exhibition includes new scholarship on the important body of work by Jeffrey Weiss. The publication documents the original show with rare archival photographs and reproductions of the early critical reviews and responses to Flavin’s fluorescent light works and includes a selection of recently commissioned statements by artists and critics who saw the exhibition in 1964. The book also contains new color plates that document each of the works from the exhibition, in addition to a selection of drawings which show the development of Flavin’s ideas about these works and their original installation.

This book is published on the occasion of an exhibition at Zwirner & Wirth that brought together the seven works from the 1964 Green Gallery show in a historically accurate recreation of their original presentation, the first in a series of projects that will explore the presentation and influence of groundbreaking historical gallery shows of the twentieth century.