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Controlled Burnings: Hiller, Latham, Schneemann

New York, 4 May – 10 June 2023

This exhibition brings together three compelling and provocative artists – Susan Hiller, John Latham and Carolee Schneemann – who coalesced briefly in London at the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the ’70s. This trio represents not only a metaphorical meeting of minds, but a shared language around ideas of material and conceptual experimentation, as well as destruction and dematerialization in art. Fire is a central motif, with Latham and Schneemann taking a torch to their book and box works respectively – in what he dubbed his Skoob works (books spelled backwards) and she called Controlled Burnings, which gives the exhibition its title. Hiller also reduced whole bodies of her own paintings to ashes, storing them in glass vials for her longstanding, annual Relics series, shown here as the incendiary Hand Grenades (1972). If painting was one of many starting points for all three artists, it was the eventual transformation of their extensive object-based, conceptual and performative practices through the ritualistic use of, not just flame, but spit, glue, violence and dreams (to name just a few of the alchemical forces involved), which ultimately grouped them together as pioneers of an emerging, alternative and transgressive international art scene.

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Installation views

Controlled Burnings: Hiller, Latham, Schneemann artwork
Controlled Burnings: Hiller, Latham, Schneemann artwork
Controlled Burnings: Hiller, Latham, Schneemann artwork
Controlled Burnings: Hiller, Latham, Schneemann artwork
Controlled Burnings: Hiller, Latham, Schneemann artwork
Controlled Burnings: Hiller, Latham, Schneemann artwork
Controlled Burnings: Hiller, Latham, Schneemann artwork

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Location

508 West 24th Street
New York

Opening Times:
Tuesday – Saturday: 10:00am – 6:00pm

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