De Wain Valentine
Friday, 30 November 2012
Work from his oeuvre.
“The sculptures that Mr. Valentine has made over the last four decades — quasireligious incarnations of coastal light and air made from some of the most sterile, synthetic materials ever produced by American industry — are not exactly low-end bartering chips. They have been showing up with increasing regularity in prestigious Chelsea and Los Angeles exhibitions, and last year one of his early pieces, from 1966, was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art, where its now commands the middle of a room devoted to Minimalism. But for many years it seemed as if Mr. Valentine’s name had slipped off the list of artists celebrated for forging a distinctly West Coast version of Minimalism in the 1960s and ’70s, and that his work had been relegated to a kind of period curiosity. One of his most ambitious pieces was long thought to be lost: a pair of 3,500-pound towers made of solid cast polyester resin, imperious 12-foot-tall monoliths that ended up (for reasons beyond Mr. Valentine’s control) residing ignobly on their sides, looking a lot like elevator lobby screens, in the headquarters of the medical supply company in Deerfield, Ill., that commissioned them in 1975.” – New York Times
via Nick Faust.