Lawrence Weiner

For this series, artist Lawrence Weiner (*1942) has made an artist’s book in exactly the same format (A6) and with the same number of pages (24) as his first contribution to documenta 5 in 1972, curated by Harald Szeemann. The partly handwritten instructions, statements, definitions, poems, and pictograms give an insight into his artistic practice and—as eloquently as poetically—transfer his ideas around dOCUMENTA (13) into language. A central figure in Conceptual art from its beginnings, Weiner works in a wide variety of media including video, books, performance, and installation.

Language: English
Lawrence Weiner (*1942 in the Bronx, New York) studied literature and philosophy at Hunter College in New York. After an intensive study of the traditional arts of painting and sculpture, he developed his own approach to art, using language, in the late 1960s. His work has been seen in countless solo shows and large, important international exhibitions. Recently, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; K21, Düsseldorf; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, produced a retrospective of his work titled AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE (2007/08). Weiner's work has been shown at the documenta 5 (1972), 6 (1977), and 7 (1982), and will also be seen in 2012 at the dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel. The artist lives in New York and Amsterdam.