Lawrence
Weiner

Lawrence Weiner (b. 1942 in the Bronx, New York, d. 2021) came to West Berlin at the invitation of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program (BKP) in January 1975. With his “Declaration of Intent” (1968), which proposes that “1. The artist may construct the piece.  2. The piece may be fabricated. 3. The piece need not be built,” Weiner became one of the central figures of the Conceptual art movement in the United States. His text-based works, which he regards as sculptures, were published and exhibited from the mid-1960s onward, above all by his gallerists Seth Siegelaub and Konrad Fischer. Weiner’s first book Statements (1968), a sixty-four page paperback containing descriptions of several projects, is considered to be one of the most important works of this period in relation to Conceptual art. In 1969/70 Weiner took part in the groundbreaking exhibition Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form at the Kunsthalle Basel, curated by Harald Szeemann. While wall installations have been Weiner’s primary medium since the early 1970s, he has also experimented with video, film, audio, and performance art, and has published numerous artist’s books, posters, multiples, and prints.

On December 10, 1975, Weiner’s film A Second Quarter (1975, 85 minutes, 16mm, color, sound) premiered at the KLICK cinema on Windscheidstrasse, in collaboration with the Artists-in-Berlin Program. The film was produced with financial support from the Program during the artist’s year-long stay in Berlin. Helmut Wietz was the cinematographer. The film’s “location” (Berlin) is the catalyst for the “action” (the work). Many of the texts the protagonists (Beatrice Conrad Eybesfeld, Hans Düttmann, Coosje Kapteyn, Tony Long, and Kirsten Vibeke Thueson, among others) recite deal with barriers and borders or with physical and geophysical phenomena. The characters also translate, count, and recite the alphabet. The scenes are set in a bourgeois Berlin apartment, in an office near the train station in West Berlin, and in the area around the ruins of Anhalter Bahnhof, a former train station, with the Berlin Wall in the background. The film was also screened in Berlin on April 2, 1976, as part of the DAAD Filmtage at the Akademie der Künste (West).

In cooperation with the Artists-in-Berlin Program, the Kabinett für aktuelle Kunst in Bremerhaven published two artist’s books by Lawrence Weiner: Towards a Reasonable End/Auf ein vernünftiges Ende zu (1975) and With a Touch of Pink/Mit einem Hauch von Rosa (1978). The texts read in English from one side and in German from the other.

Weiner participated in documenta 5, 6, 7, and 13 (1972, 1977, 1982, and 2012); the 36th, 41st, 50th and 55th Venice Biennale (1972, 1984, 2003, 2013), and the 27th Bienal de São Paulo (2006). A major retrospective survey of his work was shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf between 2007 and 2009.

Text: Eva Scharrer

Translation: Jacqueline Todd