Robert Barry

Since 1967 the American conceptualist Robert Barry has taken his work to the limits of immateriality and invisibility, creating installations with wire and nylon thread, performing actions with inert gasses and radioactive materials and going on to work with acoustic frequencies, sounds and language. This volume documents a recent site-specific work.

The full title to this volume on Robert Barry's rarely-shown early work reads: Some places to which we can come, and for a while “be free to think about what we are going to do.” This might further be understood by a typical example of Barry's work, which he designed for the sixth issue of Vito Acconci's magazine 0-9 in 1969. The contribution consisted of the following brief description: The space between pages 29 and 30 / The space between pages 74 and 75. This long-awaited volume on the early work of the New Jersey-based Conceptual artist reveals much of the work that was at the heart of the beginnings of American Conceptual art, of which Barry was a main protagonist. As early as 1967 he began working towards the limits of immateriality and invisibility, creating installations out of wire and nylon thread, performing with gases, working with acoustic frequencies and language, and producing slide projections--much of which is documented here, together with new essays on the artist's work.