OPENING THE BOX: UNPACKING MINIMALISM

Curated by Mark Godfrey

Opening 22 October, 2015, 7-9.30pm | Curator Talk 8pm 22 October, 2015 – April 2016

Dan Flavin | Isa Genzken | Robert Gober | Roni Horn | Rashid Johnson | Donald Judd | Agnes Martin | John McCracken | Nikolai Mikhailovich Suetin

The George Economou Collection is pleased to announce Opening the Box: Unpacking Minimalism. This group exhibition curated by Mark Godfrey, opens on Thursday, October 22, 2015, at the Economou Collection Space in Athens, Greece.

When people think of Minimalism, they often think of a generic grey metal box that has been fabricated in a workshop in the United States and is displayed with other similar if not identical boxes. Although this box often features in accounts of Minimalism, it is a mythical, rather than a real artwork. This exhibition of ten works from the George Economou Collection attempts to tell a more nuanced story about Minimalism by looking at a number of different debates, places and time periods.

On the ground floor, three works surround a magnificent 1978 brushed aluminium “channel” piece by Donald Judd comprised of six open modular units, an early relief of Judd’s from 1961, a 1966 paintingbyAgnesMartinanda 1988plankbyJohnMcCracken.Thisensemblealreadyraisesseveral intriguing questions: given the compositional ideas Judd’s work shares with Agnes Martin’s, was he mistaken in so often dismissing painting? And how did John McCracken negotiate the relationship of painting and sculpture when he leaned his works between the wall and the floor? What role did colour play for Judd and McCracken, and how did they approach the difference between applied and integral colour? What differentiates these two artists’ handling of texture and reflectivity?