FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 29, 2016

Collection reinstallation of Hanne Darboven’s Kulturgeschichte 1880–1983 (Cultural History 1880–1983, 1980–83)  

First solo museum exhibition in the United States by Kishio Suga featuring a new commission

New York, NY – This fall Dia Art Foundation will present two new installations at Dia:Chelsea. Kishio Suga will be on view from November 5, 2016, to April 2, 2017 and Hanne Darboven’s Kulturgeschichte 1880–1983 (Cultural History 1880–1983, 1980–83) will be on view from November 5, 2016, to July 30, 2017.

These new programs continue to demonstrate Dia’s commitment to presenting artworks that invite sustained interest and contemplation from visitors, scholars, and artists alike. Additionally, they trace relationships, formal dialogues, and conceptual parallels among international artistic practices that are historically and intellectually linked to Dia’s focused collection of art from the 1960s and 1970s.

Kishio Suga
November 5, 2016–April 2, 2017 

Beginning November 5, 2016, Dia will present an exhibition of Kishio Suga’s work at Dia:Chelsea at 541 West 22nd Street in New York City. Suga is a founding member of Mono-ha (School of Things), which emerged in Japan in the 1960s and 1970s and developed in parallel with Postminimal and Land art in the United States and Arte Povera in Europe—movements at the core of Dia’s permanent collection. This will be Suga’s first solo museum show in the United States. 

In this exhibition, Suga will respond to the building’s unique history as a marble-cutting facility by recreating his Placement of Condition (1973), a signature installation of cut stones that lean precariously away from each other, but are bound together with wire into a mutually dependent and stable network. This work will be on view alongside a selection of other significant historical installations and new works conceived specifically for Dia that explore issues of balance and structure and that respond to the physical parameters of the space. His new commission will investigate material equilibrium through a series of interweaving metal rods that are perched on top of wooden uprights. 

Hanne Darboven, Kulturgeschichte 1880–1983 (Cultural History 1880–1983), 1980–83
November 5, 2016­–July 30, 2017

From November 5, 2016, to July 30, 2017, Dia will present Hanne Darboven’s Kulturgeschichte 1880–1983 (Cultural History 1880–1983, 1980–83) at Dia:Chelsea at 545 West 22nd Street in New York City.  The upcoming presentation will offer audiences the opportunity to experience this important work from Dia’s permanent collection, which has not been on view in the United States for over a decade.

Cultural History 1880–1983 features 1,590 framed works on paper and 19 sculptural objects. The framed works on paper include photographs of doorways, daily newsmagazine covers, images of cameras and Hollywood celebrities, touristic postcards, the contents of an exhibition catalogue on postwar art, and documentation of prior installations of the work. The specificity of the materials chosen embodies a blending of the personal and the public, telling the story of society at large, while also presenting an autobiography of Darboven herself. From the covers of Der Spiegel with their emphasis on war and brutality, to the racial overtones seen in the slave figures and rainmaker sculptures, to the postcards presenting a bucolic and pastoral prewar Germany, there is a narrative of trauma and recovery that runs throughout Darboven’s work. For the viewer, Cultural History 1880–1983 can be an all-encompassing and overwhelming experience, physically impossible to take in at once. It is the magnum opus of an artist whose work remains lesser known than her Minimalist and Conceptual peers, particularly so within the United States. 

Kishio Suga

Kishio Suga was born in Morioka, Japan, in 1944 and currently lives and works in northern Japan. Suga received a BFA from Tama Art University in Tokyo in 1968. Since that time, he has been producing sculptural installations that explore questions of formal, material, and conceptual equilibrium. Suga’s work has been exhibited extensively in Japan, Europe, and the United States, and he has had numerous solo exhibitions in his home country including at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (2015), the Yokohama Museum of Art (1999), and the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art (1997). The forthcoming presentation at Dia will be the artist’s first solo museum show in the United States.

Hanne Darboven

Hanne Darboven was born in Munich in 1941. Following a brief episode as a pianist, she studied painting at the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Hamburg. Between 1966 and 1969 she lived intermittently in New York City, after which she returned to her family home in Hamburg. Her first one-person show was at the Konrad Fischer Galerie, Düsseldorf, in 1967. Subsequent solo presentations of her work have taken place at the Ydessa Hendeles Foundation, Toronto (1991), Staatsgalerie Stuttgart (1997), and Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (1999), among others. Her work has also been featured in many international exhibitions including Documenta, Kassel (1972, 1977, 1982, and 2002), the São Paulo Biennial (1973), and the Venice Biennale (1982). Dia first exhibited Kulturgeschichte 1880–1983 (Cultural History 1880–1983, 1980–83) in New York City in 1996–97. Hanne Darboven died in Hamburg in 2009.

Dia Art Foundation

Founded in 1974, Dia Art Foundation is committed to initiating, supporting, presenting, and preserving extraordinary art projects. Dia:Beacon opened in May 2003 in Beacon, New York. Dia also maintains several long-term sites, including Walter De Maria’s The New York Earth Room (1977) and The Broken Kilometer (1979), Max Neuhaus’s Times Square (1977), Joseph Beuys’s 7000 Eichen (7000 Oaks, which was inaugurated at Documenta 7 in 1982), and Dan Flavin’s untitled (1996), all of which are located in New York City; the Dan Flavin Art Institute (established in 1983) in Bridgehampton, New York; De Maria’s The Lightning Field (1977) in western New Mexico; Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970) in Great Salt Lake, Utah; and De Maria’s The Vertical Earth Kilometer (1977) in Kassel, Germany.

Dia currently presents temporary exhibitions and installations, performances, lectures, and readings on West 22nd Street in New York City.

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For additional information or materials contact:
Press Department, Dia Art Foundation, press@diaart.org, 212 293 5518