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Dia Acquires a Group of Works by Mary Corse

A New Installation of the Artist’s Work to Open at Dia:Beacon in May 2018

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 24, 2018

Dia Acquires a Group of Works by Mary Corse

A New Installation of the Artist’s Work to Open at Dia:Beacon in May 2018

New York – Dia Art Foundation has acquired four works by Mary Corse (b. 1945, Berkeley). To celebrate this new acquisition, Dia will present a long-term installation of Corse’s works in May 2018 at Dia:Beacon in Beacon, New York.

A pioneer of light-based art, Corse is one of the few women associated with the Light and Space movement that originated in Southern California in the 1960s. Throughout her career Corse has experimented with different ways to physically imbue her paintings with light. Her techniques have included the use of electric light, ceramic tiles, and glass microspheres, with which she creates simple geometric configurations that give structure to the luminescent internal space of her paintings. These works open themselves up to their environment, reflecting and refracting light, and invite a perceptual encounter that is grounded in both vision and movement.

“One of the most remarkable and unique attributes of Dia:Beacon is its use of natural light and how it changes in the gallery through the seasons. It is a perfect environment in which to truly appreciate the work of Mary Corse, an artist who has considered the effects of light on abstract painting in groundbreaking ways,” said Jessica Morgan, Nathalie de Gunzburg Director, Dia Art Foundation. “This group of works demonstrates how Corse, over more than fifty years of practice, has incorporated light into her paintings and created large-scale and encompassing works that respond to viewers’ movements and the constantly changing conditions of their environment.”

Dia’s presentation will introduce Corse to the permanent collection, which includes light-based works by artists such as Dan Flavin and Robert Irwin who use fluorescent light in environmentally encompassing sculptural installations. Corse, by contrast, brings new complexity to Dia’s holdings—her paintings shape and redirect the existing ambient light.

On view for three years, the installation will present a focused examination of Corse’s treatment of internal compositional space—using geometric form in juxtaposition with gestural brushwork—from the 1960s to the present. The presentation will include Dia’s recent acquisitions: Untitled (White Light L-Corners) (1969), Untitled (White Light Square Corners) (1970), Untitled (Black Earth Series) (1978), and Untitled (White Inner Band) (2010).

Related Exhibition

In June 2018 the Whitney Museum of American Art will present Mary Corse’s first solo museum survey, Mary Corse: A Survey in Light, bringing together the artist’s key bodies of work. The exhibition will include her early shaped canvases, freestanding sculptures, and light encasements that she engineered in the mid-1960s, as well as her breakthrough White Light Paintings that she started in 1968, and the Black Earth Series, which she initiated after moving in 1970 from downtown Los Angeles to Topanga Canyon. The exhibition will travel to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art from July 28– November 10, 2019.

On October 12, Dia Art Foundation is partnering with the Whitney to present a symposium at the Whitney on Corse’s career and offering new perspectives on her work. Further details will be forthcoming.

Dia Art Foundation 
Founded in 1974, Dia Art Foundation is committed to advancing, realizing, and preserving the vision of artists. At Dia:Beacon and Dia:Chelsea in Beacon and New York City, Dia fulfills its mission by commissioning new projects, organizing temporary exhibitions, displaying its collection of art from the 1960s and 1970s, and presenting programs of public engagement. Dia also maintains several long-term sites including: Walter De Maria’s The New York Earth Room (1977) and The Broken Kilometer (1979), Max Neuhaus’s Times Square (1977), and Joseph Beuys’s 7000 Eichen (7000 Oaks, which was inaugurated at Documenta 7 in 1982), all of which are located in New York City; the Dan Flavin Art Institute (established in 1983) in Bridgehampton, New York; De Maria’s The Lightning Field (1977) in western New Mexico; Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970) in Great Salt Lake, Utah; and De Maria’s The Vertical Earth Kilometer (1977) in Kassel, Germany.

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For additional information or materials, contact:
Press Department, Dia Art Foundation, press@diaart.org or 212 293 5518

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