Barry Schwabsky at Art Forum:
Through August 14, 2026—Among the best-known works by first-generation American Conceptualist William Anastasi are his “Wall Removals,” from 1965 to 1967. Issue, 1966, is made by removing a floor-to-ceiling strip of the wall’s plaster surface, with the debris left piled at its foot. The work is distinctly sculptural and employs both the traditional modes: on the wall, per via di levare, as Michelangelo had it (the subtractive mode, carving) and via di porre (the additive mode, or modeling) on the floor. But the piece has a painterly dimension, too: The marks left by carving out the vertical band correspond to brushstrokes, and the verticality of the form inevitably echoes Barnett Newman’s “zips.”
Eleven mostly early works by Anastasi, who died in 2023 at the age of ninety, make up “exhaling, then inhaling.” Curated by Anastasi’s widow and fellow artist Dove Bradshaw, this tight selection focuses on works whose manifestation is physically or visually inseparable from the exhibition space—works that in principle cannot be moved but only remade.
more here.
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