The first museum survey of the work of Los Angeles-based artist Sam Durant, this exhibition presented works made in the past two decades, encompassing drawing, photography, video, sculpture, and sound.
His Quaternary Field/Associative Diagram (1998) maps out art critic Rosalind Krauss’s canonical Klein diagram, from her 1970 essay “Sculpture in the Expanded Field,” with its category terms replaced by an assortment of names and concepts including Kurt Cobain, “scatological structures,” and “pop star.” Other works in the show included sculptures from his “Abandoned Houses” series (1995), remakes of LA’s celebrated Case Study Houses; Upside Down and Backwards, Completely Unburied (1999), a miniature model of Robert Smithson’s Partially Buried Woodshed (1970) filled with CD players playing songs by the Rolling Stones, Nirvana, and Neil Young concurrently; and Upside Down: Pastoral Scene (2002), a series of upside-down tree trunks on mirrors, each filled with speakers playing music by Black artists such as Billie Holiday and Public Enemy.
Sam Durant traveled from MOCA Grand Avenue to Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf.
The exhibition was accompanied by a catalogue.
Sam Durant was organized by Michael Darling, Associate Curator, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.