Robert Barry is a major American conceptual artist who started working in the early 1960s. His recent work Changing refers back to his minimal early pieces, putting space, paint, and text in relation to one another. His pristine monochromic paintings are linked through the meaning of the words yet never coalesce to form sentences. They are hints to emotions and thoughts that echo rather differently in the spectator’s mind. Changing is composed of 18 bright red square paintings hung randomly in a U-shaped space. The text on each of these paintings escapes the edges of the canvas, leaving only two or three letters of a word visible. BECOMING, REAL, WONDER, PASSION, ABSURD, DIFFERENT, INTIMATE, ALMOST are but a few examples of what one can read – and not read. Each time Changing is shown, its arrangement is completely different. Chance plays an important role, and the space between the paintings is as important as the paintings themselves. The installation activates the perception of architecture, essential to reading Changing as a whole.
