Keith Sonnier. Light Works, 1968 to 2017

Galleria Fumagalli is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition of American artist Keith Sonnier, represented exclusively in Italy by the gallery since February 2018. 
The exhibition documents the evolution of the artist’s creative process from the first historical pieces from 1968 to his recent work. 
Keith Sonnier is among the first and most significant representatives of a generation of artists who pioneered a radical approach to sculpture. Since the late 1960s, he has challenged its preconceived notions by experimenting with industrial and ephemeral materials ranging from latex and satin, to found objects, transmitters and video. In 1968, he began creating wall sculptures using incandescent light bulbs, neon and transformers, experimenting with neon in organic as well as geometric configurations with the aim of giving new form to light and new meaning to the material. Keith Sonnier often works in series, some of which have spanned the course of his career. Elements of such early experimental sculptural works are often recognizable in subsequent installations, even in the architectural interventions on a monumental scale.
The exhibition "Keith Sonnier. Light Works, 1968 to 2017” offers a curated selection of Sonnier’s iconic sculptures from various periods of his career ranging from the first series from the late Sixties such as Lit Circle Series (1968), Neon Wrapping Incandescent Series (1970) and Sel Series (1978-2003), to the most recent ones, including the Chandelier Series (2006-), Portal Series (2015) and Floating Grid Series (2017). Keith Sonnier uses neon glass tubes to create spacial dimensions by interweaving lines, arches and curves of light and color that interact with the surrounding architecture.
An exhaustive volume dedicated to the work of Keith Sonnier is in course of publication.
  Keith Sonnier (Mamou, Louisiana, 1941) radically reinvented sculpture in the late 1960s. After graduating with a B.A. from the University of Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette in 1963, he went on to receive an M.F.A. from Rutgers University in 1966. Employing previously unusual materials, Sonnier, along with his contemporaries, Eva Hesse, Barry Le Va, Bruce Nauman, Richard Serra, Joel Shapiro, Richard Tuttle, and Jackie Winsor, called all previous concepts of sculpture into question. He experimented with a wide range of materials and in 1968 began working with neon which quickly became a defining element of his work. Sonnier has been the subject of more than 130 solo exhibitions and has participated in more than 360 group exhibitions throughout his career, including: Documenta 5, Kassel (1972); Keith Sonnier: Neon (1989) at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C .; Keith Sonnier: Porte Vue (1979) at the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Projects: Keith Sonnier (1971) at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Venice Biennale (1972, 1982); the Whitney Museum of American Art's 1970 Annual Exhibition: Contemporary American Sculpture, Biennial Exhibitions (1973, 1977) and The New Sculpture 1965 - 1975: Between Geometry and Gesture (1990) which then moved to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. In 2000, the artist created Millennium 2000, a temporary neon installation on the four façades of Peter Zumthor’s Kunsthaus Bregenz in Austria, in conjunction with the exhibition Keith Sonnier: Environmental Works 1968-99. In 2004, the artist created one of Los Angeles’s largest public installations entitled Motordom. In 2013, the artist’s work was exhibited in Venice in the exhibition organized by the Prada Foundation When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969 / Venice 2013 (curated by Germano Celant). The artist has shown recently in international institutions such as the Whitechapel Gallery in London, the Hall Foundation in Vermont and the Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain (MAMAC) in Nice. His work is currently featured in two solo museum exhibitions in the United States, namely the DIA/Dan Flavin Institute and the Parrish Art Museum in Bridgehampton and Water Mill New York respectively. 
 
Opening: Thursday 27 September from 6.30 pm

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