#Dia beacon sculpture series

By subdividing space in this way, these works operate at an architectural scale. Edwards suspends these simple geometric constructions, which at times feature chains, across a section of a room.

#Dia beacon sculpture series

Melvin Edwards is made possible by Peter Marino, the David Schwartz Foundation, Inc., and an anonymous donor.īetween 19, Melvin Edwards developed a series of sculptures using barbed wire-or “b.wire,” to use the artist’s term-that embrace the material’s formal and evocative potential. Melvin Edwards is organized by Alexis Lowry, curator, Dia Art Foundation, with Zuna Maza, curatorial assistant. Together, they interrupt the architectural frame of Dia Beacon, provocatively delineating passageways and obstructing corners. Four of these installations, three of which recently entered Dia’s permanent collection, are on view here for the first time. Meanwhile, the material’s evocative referentiality-to a social, agricultural, and militaristic history of containment and bondage-ensures these works resist resolution. In dialogue with the contemporaneously emerging field of Postminimal art, Edwards’s barbed wire sculptures explore geometry in suspension. The punctuated lines of this material are pulled across a section of a room, using linearity to create depth and dimension and heightening what the artist describes as the “painfully dynamic and aggressive resistance” of the material. Each work consists of a simple geometric construction that volumetrically subdivides a space. In a brief but prolific period between 19, Edwards developed a series of environmentally scaled sculptures using steel from barbed wire. This exhibition presents a group of previously unrealized installations from one of sculptor Melvin Edwards’ most dynamic bodies of work.