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Lot Essay
Bent to a Straight and Narrow at a Point of Passage is one of Lawrence Weiner's celebrated epigrammatic text installations. It was exhibited to great acclaim at his major retrospective
Works and Re-Constructions held at the Kunsthalle Bern in 1983. The artist's primary medium since the 1970s, the work consists entirely of words constructed in a concise sentence, painted in a non-descript font upon a wall. The words themselves import a sense of the instruction or action carried out sometime in the past or yet to be fulfilled. Like his contemporary such as Joseph Kosuth, Weiner was one of the founding conceptual artists, challenging the very nature of the art object and subjecting it to 'dematerialization' as Lucy Lippard and John Chandler once famously wrote. In this respect, Bent to a Straight and Narrow at a Point of Passage can be understood as a treatise for a new and radical practice, elevating the word to the status of art.
Works and Re-Constructions held at the Kunsthalle Bern in 1983. The artist's primary medium since the 1970s, the work consists entirely of words constructed in a concise sentence, painted in a non-descript font upon a wall. The words themselves import a sense of the instruction or action carried out sometime in the past or yet to be fulfilled. Like his contemporary such as Joseph Kosuth, Weiner was one of the founding conceptual artists, challenging the very nature of the art object and subjecting it to 'dematerialization' as Lucy Lippard and John Chandler once famously wrote. In this respect, Bent to a Straight and Narrow at a Point of Passage can be understood as a treatise for a new and radical practice, elevating the word to the status of art.