Nancy Holt: Seeing in the Round
@ The Art Institute of Chicago
111 S Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60603
On view through Sunday, April 20th
More than a sculpture to look at, it is a sculpture to look through.
—Nancy Holt, 2012
In the early 1970s, Nancy Holt (American, 1938–2014) created her first sculpture, a viewing device that she called a Locator. Made from two pieces of welded steel pipe, with a viewing aperture set at the height of her own eyes, the Locator became a powerful means for Holt to ground her viewer in the conscious process of perception. The first Locators were installed in Holt’s New York studio in 1971. From here she could train a viewer’s eye on overlooked aspects of the urban landscape, focusing attention on found elements, such as ventilators on nearby rooftops or windows on neighboring buildings. She then created site-responsive installations, using the Locator as an apparatus to frame surprising passages in the built environment, which she selected and marked with paint.
In this installation, conceived in collaboration with the Holt/Smithson Foundation, two historical works—Dual Locators (1972) and Locator (PS1) (1980)—are presented for the first time out-of-doors on a sculpture terrace, where the interior and exterior architecture of the museum are in constant dialogue with each other and the surrounding city. Drawing awareness to the act of looking, these devices ask us to attend to our individual experience of vision, while challenging the presumption that how we see is in any way self-evident.
Nancy Holt: Seeing in the Round is curated by Caitlin Haskell, Gary C. and Frances Comer Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, and Makayla May, curatorial associate, Modern and Contemporary Art.
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Tags: Chicago, Loop, Nancy Holt, Nancy Holt: Seeing in the Round, Seeing in the Round, The Art Institute of Chicago
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