BE THERE
You’re ThroughPresented by Baumgartner Gallery October 12, 2006- November 8, 2006Reception: October 12, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pmWilliam AnastasiFor this exhibition Anastasi has recreated the site-specific photographic work 'Through, 1967' for the first time in New York since the original was made at Dwan Gallery two generations ago. Its only other incarnation was in Philadelphia for the artist’s 1995 retrospective at the Moore College of Art. Eileen Neff’s description of the work in the exhibit’s catalogue reads in part: "The… photograph mounted on the wall in Through shows what one would see if that space were a break in the wall revealing the view outside. Here, the photograph functions like a window… . A number of other works presented engage the notion of Going Through. Anastasi’s ‘recipe’ for Issue, 1966 reads: Draw two vertical lines, 4 1/2 inches apart from floor to ceiling on a plaster wall. With a chisel and hammer chip the surface away within the lines to a one-quarter inch depth. Pile the debris at the base of the removal in a mound as wide as the strip extending onto the floor at a right angle from the removal." A third work, documented without title in 1967, first executed in 1969, is re-created here after 37 years. The recipe: Draw free-hand an oval on a wall and remove the surface plaster within it to the supporting studs. Attach a milled pine shelf mid-way and pile upon it the debris. There will also be on view vintage and recent drawings, including You’re Through, 2006, the drawing of a silk-screen frame on a silk-screen mesh, a piece that adds another meaning to the phrase Site-Specific. In the catalogue essay for Anastasi’s 2001 retrospective at the Nicolaj Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center, director Elisabeth Delin Hansen writes: "Between 1966 and 1970 William Anastasi gave four exhibitions at the Dwan Gallery in New York. With the twenty-twenty vision granted by hindsight these four shows can now be described as epoch making. However, he received only slight attention at that time outside of an extremely narrow circle. In fact, a number of his works from the early 60’s onward anticipated to a startling degree certain important works by a number of artists, among others, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Eva Hesse, Robert Smithson and Richard Serra." In the same catalogue Thomas Mc Evilley writes: "His work was fundamental to the formation of Conceptual Art. The incisiveness and accuracy of his intuition in the years when the thematics of Conceptualism were being worked out stand in the forefront of a canonical list of American names such as Lawrence Weiner, Joseph Kosuth and Douglas Huebler." The Artforum review for that retrospective states directly: “Anastasi’s work has been seminal.” Sculpture Magazine’s review begins with “William Anastasi is indisputably one of the most underrated artists of his generation.”
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