October 28, 2017 - June 2, 2018
Dia Art Foundation presents an exhibition of works by the French artist François Morellet. A prolific painter, sculptor, and installation artist, Morellet was one of the founding members of the Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel, an artist’s collaborative that emerged in France in the early 1960s. Although the artist’s systematic art has been widely exhibited in Europe, his oeuvre has rarely been shown or studied in the United States.
Presented at Dia’s exhibition spaces in New York City and Beacon, François Morellet offers a focused exploration of the artist’s wide-ranging practice. The Dia:Chelsea installation includes a large selection of early abstract geometric paintings, key examples from Morellet’s later series and neon works, and his first architectural integration, titled Trames 3° 87° 93° 183° (Grids 3° 87° 93° 183°, 1971/2017). Meanwhile, Dia:Beacon’s lower-level gallery features No End Neon (1990/2017), a site-specific work that was reconfigured for Dia’s upstate venue in close collaboration with the Morellet Estate in Cholet, France. This expansive installation—gifted to Dia by the Morellet family and Blain Southern, London and Berlin—allows visitors to encounter Morellet’s practice alongside major installations of work by his American and European peers represented in Dia’s permanent collection.
Organized by adjunct curator Béatrice Gross with assistant curator Megan Holly Witko, this survey constitutes the first in-depth examination of the artist’s work to be mounted in the United States in more than thirty years.