Afterimage: Drawing Through Process

The term "process art" describes a moment of radical, aformalexperimentation in postwar American sculpture. Through the medium ofdrawing, Afterimage revisits process art in terms of the artists whodefined the movement andsuggests a transitional moment when many ofits practitioners anticipated thefeminist and postminimalist art ofthe 1970s. Nancy Grossman's use of language, forexample, suggests akind of material abstraction, and Nancy Holt's earth works andrelateddrawings introduced content into a minimalist vocabulary. The bookalsoexplores the drawing as a residual object in works in which theprocess of makingdictates the form of the drawing. Examples includeGordon Matta-Clark's stackedcuttings, Robert Morris' "blind time"drawings, and Sol Lewitt's folded constructiondrawings. Other works, such as those by Bruce Nauman and Robert Smithson, record aparticularapproach to body-based and process-oriented sculpture. The book, whichaccompanies an exhibition, contains an essayby Cornelia H. Butler on the historicalambiguity surrounding processart and one by Pamela M. Lee on temporality in work ofthe late1960s. The artists included in the book are William Anastasi, RichardArtschwager, Mel Bochner, Agnes Denes, Nancy Grossman, RobertGrosvenor, Marcia Hafif, Eva Hesse, Nancy Holt, Barry LeVa, SolLewitt, Lee Lozano, SylviaPlimack Mangold, Gordon Matta-Clark, RobertMorris, Bruce Nauman, Yvonne Rainer, Dorothea Rockburne, Alan Saret, Joel Shapiro, Robert Smithson, Michelle Stuart, Richard Tuttle, andJack Whitten.Copublished with The Museum of Contemporary Art. LosAngeles.EXHIBITION SCHEDULE: The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los AngelesLos Angeles, CaliforniaApril 11-August 22, 1999Contemporary Arts MuseumHouston, TexasMay-July2000Henry Art GallerySeattle, WashingtonJuly-September 2000