As, Then by Peter Downsbrough

As, Then by Peter Downsbrough

25,00€

Publisher: Edition Taube

Author(s): Peter Downsbrough

Format: Softcover

Size: 21.5 x 21 cm

Edition: 1st Edition of 200

Pages: 56

ISBN: -

A new book by the legendary conceptual artist: an interaction of a grid and a line with words and photographs of walls with black holes – and a small black square, a black hole in its own right, the whole interspersed with blank pages.

Peter Downsbrough (b. 1940 in New Brunswick, New Jersey, US) is Brussel based sculptor, photographer and conceptual artist. He works with the connection between architecture, typography and linguistics.

Passed away in August 2024, Brussels (Belgium).

American-Belgian sculptor, photographer and conceptual artist. In the early 1960s, Downsbrough studied architecture and art at the University of Cincinnati and Cooper Union in New York City. Since 1972, he has used books to present his work (as have Robert Barry, Sol LeWitt, Edward Ruscha and Lawrence Weiner). At first Downsbrough limited himself to texts and lines, later he also integrated maps and photos of urban spaces. Peter Downsbrough works with the connection between architecture, typography and linguistics. His highly reduced vocabulary consists of short and concise conjunctions and prepositions such as: and, as, or, to, if, but, from, with, here, there, maar, op, en, et, ou, mais. These have a double function: on the one hand, they are iconographic signs that describe the space and, on the other, they give the viewer the opportunity to move from one thought to the next and to establish a connection between individual sentences or parts of sentences. Downsbrough uses a number of verbs and nouns. Peter Downsbrough's material consists of letters, lines, cuts and spaces. In interior spaces, he uses adhesive letters, which he places on walls, floors and/or ceilings. Lines drawn with adhesive tape, usually black, emphasize architectural elements. Metal pipes, which stand freely in the room and are sometimes attached to the wall, set accents. Downsbrough's sculptures, interventions in public space, consist of horizontal and vertical black bars on which words or fragments of words are arranged. Downsbrough's black and white photographs of urban environments are also characterized by spatial rhythms and linear geometry. Peter Downsbrough also produces models, videos and drawings. Peter Downsbrough is represented by the Barbara Krakow Gallery in Boston, the GDM in Paris and the Galerie Thomas Zander in Cologne.

https://www.moma.org/artists/36251

Conceptual artist, photographer, and filmmaker Peter Downsbrough, whose spare, communicative works blended architecture and typography to engage and fundamentally alter space, died on August 10 in Brussels, where he had lived since 1989. He was eighty-three. His death was announced by Boston’s Krakow Witkin Gallery, which represented him. “Downsbrough’s works are markers that define the intersections between the conditions and experience of their construction and perception,” wrote curator Ann Goldstein in Reconsidering the Object of Art: 1965–1975. “Rather than describing a situation, they concretize, fragment, and intervene in the process and conditions of representation. They do not delineate a place but the conditions of place.”

https://www.artforum.com/news/peter-downsbrough-dies-19402024-558727/

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