LYNDA BENGLIS
PRIMARY STRUCTURES (PAULA’S PROPS)

Exhibition
7.–28.2.2016
Opening hours: Tue–Fri 11am–4pm, Sat–Sun 11am–5pm
Opening: 6.2.2016, 5pm

Tårnsalen, KODE 4
Art Museum of Bergen
Rasmus Meyers allé 7, 5015 Bergen, Norway

A pioneer of temporal, vernacular materials, audacious colors, and unapologetic sensory pleasure, Lynda Benglis (b. 1941, USA) has brushed wax, poured latex and phosphorescent foam, layered video, air sprayed metals, stretched paper, and cut-up ceramic. Her unexpected tactile pursuits continuously sidestep mainstream movements in contemporary art.

Diving straight into the humorous rebuke of her minimalist contemporaries and their heyday exhibition at New York’s Jewish Museum in 1966, Lynda Benglis’s opening installation in Bergen, Primary Structures (Paula’s Props), 1975, inaugurates the long-term inquiry into her practice. An odd collection of campy ready-made objects—velvet cloth, broken columns, a toy car, a ficus tree—this work is a stand-alone gesture in an artistic oeuvre that has continuously valued drastic departures, foreign materials, and collaborative experiments.