LAWRENCE WEINER
Can you feel the weight of the light from above? Perhaps you can if you look up at Lawrence Weiner’s textual work at the entrance to ARKEN.
Lawrence Weiner, THE WEIGHT OF THE LIGHT / FROM ABOVE / BROUGHT TO BEAR ON THE FROTH / OF THE WAVES ON THE SEA, 2007. ARKEN Museum of Modern Art. Photo: Torben Petersen
Outside ARKEN’s main entrance, an acute-angled wall several metres tall directs your gaze up towards the sky. Try to put the sky and the landscape you find yourself in into words. That is what the American artist Lawrence Weiner did in the form of a sculptural poem written on the wall with giant letters and symbols: THE WEIGHT OF THE LIGHT / FROM ABOVE / BROUGHT TO BEAR ON THE FROTH / OF THE WAVES ON THE SEA.
A gift to you
The work has been created especially for ARKEN and its surroundings. It uses words, signs, colours, scale and space, but it is not poetry, sculpture or installation alone. It is a gift to you that can strengthen your experience of being in a particular place. You can also take it with you as a memory or a photograph for example – and of course share it with others.
About Lawrence Weiner
Lawrence Weiner’s earliest works consisted of craters in the Californian landscape that he had created with explosions. Later, he worked with wall installations, artist books, film, audio, performance art, sculpture and much else. Language and the influence of visual elements on language were his most important tools.
Lawrence Weiner is one of the most important originators of the conceptual art which arose in the 1960s. In conceptual art, the art is not an expression of the artist’s own emotions or the unique personal execution of a work. It is the idea that is the bearing element.
1942-21, born in the Bronx, New York, USA.
Lived and worked in New York and Amsterdam.
Self-taught artist.
Was awarded many international prizes.
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