Lawrence WeinerIN & OUT OF PLACE CARRIED BY ITS OWN WEIGHT, 2011

Language + the materials referred to

Dimensions variable

About the artist

is known for his philosophically minded works that propose new ways of making and experiencing art. A major figure in the development of the Conceptual art movement, Weiner was deeply interested in communication and reception. His art, which has been installed in public and institutional spaces around the world, is marked by its inherent generosity and fluidity. In addition to his sculptures, Weiner produced music, films, and videos, as well as artist books and editions, throughout his career. Lawrence Weiner (b. 1942, New York; d. 2021, New York) was born in New York’s South Bronx, graduating from Stuyvesant High School at age 16 and briefly attending Hunter College before setting out on his own. Hitchhiking around the United States as a teenager, Weiner left small sculptures on the roads he traveled. It was during this period of his life, in 1960, when he created what he would later consider his first official artwork: Cratering Piece , in which he set off explosives in a state park in Mill Valley, California, forging new, sculptural crevices within the landscape. While still in high school in New York, Weiner became a frequent participant in civil rights and anti-nuclear protests, events that would later shape his understanding of art as it relates to social responsibility. For Weiner, art making was about finding the “right question” rather than the “right answer.” Weiner drew inspiration from the city where he lived and worked all his life. “I didn’t have the advantage of a middle-class perspective,” he once said of his childhood in the South Bronx. “Art was something else; art was the notations on the wall, or the messages left by other people. I grew up in a city where I had read the walls; I still read the walls. I love to put work of mine out on the walls and let people read it. Some will remember it and then somebody else comes along and puts something else over it. It becomes archaeology rather than history.”

About the artist

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