Trained as an architect, Barry Le Va was a pioneer of Post-Minimalist and Process Art who for decades created works that precisely charted the artist’s relationship to space and created a specific experience of space for the viewer. He used wide-ranging materials and implements such as meat cleavers, broken glass, ball bearings, powdered chalk, and wool felt, creating installations that may appear disordered but are actually exactingly planned in relation to the space in which each is installed, laid out on paper in precise plans. These plans function in a way analogous to musical scores, and each piece is executed with a certain amount of chance and improvisation. He described his installations as “residue of an activity, a result of cause and effect, and the handling of tangible materials. In some sense [the work] is always about reconstructing, but in a non-linear way, based upon picking up clues: what is this in relationship to that? Hopefully this leads the viewer to something. Certain forms, or shapes, or the proportions may or may not give a sense of architecture. There are so many different forces mixed in these works. What I’m after is simply a mental engagement, questions, possibilities, readings.”
In this instance, the installation instructions as set forth in a certificate of authenticity are: “Draw a diagonal line at a 45-degree angle from the corner of the mom opposite to the entrance doorway. Measure the width of the entrance doorway and mirror that measurement on the floor at a 90-degree angle. Draw a line at a 90-degree angle to meet the first line drawn. Apply two or three layers of standard chalk as evenly as possible within the perimeter of the drawn line and solid walls. Cracks or spaces in the floor do not need to be filled in.”
