May 21, 2015 – Sean Kelly is delighted to announce Notebooks and Duration Drawings, 1972 - 2013; an exhibition of works on paper by renowned artist Anthony McCall. The exhibition will also feature a select group of McCall’s studio notebooks, from the 1970s and the last ten years. An opening reception will take place on Thursday, June 25, from 6:00 – 8:00pm. The artist will be present and will be signing copies of his most recent publications, Anthony McCall: Notebooks & Conversations and Anthony McCall: 1970s Works on Paper.
McCall's rarely seen drawings explore his installations from conception through production. Included are scores and sequential studies for his seminal solid light works, for his performances, and for proposals for various public works. The exhibition will also display the three-dimensional storyboards McCall developed for his most recent solid light work, Face to Face, which debuted at Sean Kelly in 2013.
This exhibition marks the debut of the book Anthony McCall: Notebooks & Conversations, which features over one hundred hitherto unseen working drawings from dozens of McCall’s numerous notebooks, many of which will be on view in the exhibition. It was in the notebooks that his sculptural forms and cinematic structures first began to take shape. As the authors of the book, artists Graham Ellard and Stephen Johnstone, put it, “the notebooks contain diagrams, charts, storyboards, sketches, plans, scripts, projections, logs, graphs, inventories, maps, drafts, notations, scores, instructions, reflections, calculations, blueprints, doodles, basic programmes, scrawls, scribbles and crossings-out.”
McCall has exhibited at, amongst others: Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2004; Tate Britain, London, 2004; Institut d’Art Contemporain, Villeurbanne, France, 2006; Musée de Rochechouart, France, 2007; SFMoMA, 2007; Serpentine Gallery, London, 2007-8; Hangar Bicocca, Milan, 2009; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 2009; Serralves Foundation, Porto, 2011; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, 2012; Tate Modern, London, 2012; Les Abattoirs, Toulouse, 2013; Kunstmuseum St Gallen – Lokremise, 2013; the Eye Film Museum, Amsterdam, 2014; and MONA, Tasmania, 2015. McCall currently has work on view in the exhibition Formes Simples at the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; in Light Show at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; and in Immateriality at SESC Belenzinho, Sao Paulo. Upcoming exhibitions include Anthony McCall: Solid Light at the Museo Cantonale d'Arte, Lugano, opening September 2015.
Anthony McCall: Notebooks & Conversations, published by Lund Humphries in association with Kunstmuseum St Gallen, and Anthony McCall: 1970s Works on Paper, a monograph published by Walther König with text by noted historian Anne Wagner, will be on view and available at the gallery during the run of the exhibition.
Concurrently, in the main gallery space, Sean Kelly will present By the Book, a group exhibition of contemporary works inspired by literature and, in the front gallery, esteemed German publishing house Hatje Cantz will present a “pop-up” bookshop.