Beacon, New York, November 4, 2024 – Opening on November 8, 2024, at Dia Beacon, Keith Sonnier marks the artist’s first posthumous institutional exhibition in the United States, presenting a series of pivotal works created between 1968 and 1970, a period that saw a radical transformation in the artist’s approach to sculpture. The exhibition brings together Sonnier’s crucial experiments across media, including early works, mostly realized in situ, using his signature materials of neon, latex, and flocking. The exhibition pulls from Dia’s unparalleled collection of the artist’s work, including new acquisitions and the room-size installation Dis-Play II (1970), which was shown at Dia Bridgehampton in 2018–19.

 “Keith Sonnier’s sculptures and installations are emblematic of Postminimalism’s process-oriented approach with an emphasis on responsive, often everyday materials. The exhibition reconstitutes Sonnier’s most experimental period and places his practice in dialogue and proximity with like-minded peers who similarly engaged concept, process, and duration as fundamental elements of sculpture, including Robert Morris, Senga Nengudi, Lucas Samaras, and Richard Serra. With his work now on long-term view at Dia Beacon, visitors will gain a deeper understanding of Sonnier’s varied approaches to materiality, light, and space,” said Jessica Morgan, Dia’s Nathalie de Gunzburg Director.

The exhibition features work created shortly after Sonnier graduated from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, in 1966. In the years following his studies Sonnier pursued what he termed “psychologically loaded” industrial materials—including cloth and satin in addition to neon, latex, and flocking—with strong associative qualities. This group of works became integral to the emergence of Postminimal art, with most on view at Dia Beacon featured in several paradigm-shifting exhibitions in the United States and Europe.  

The early Rat-Tail Exercise (1968) is a loose grid of latex, rubber, and flocking that stretches from floor to wall, evoking organic, follicle-like qualities. Similarly, Flocked Wall (1969), engages its architectural support through its material manipulation, with Sonnier directly casting the gallery wall with latex and flocking, then cutting and peeling it away “like skin.” These formative sculptures demonstrate the artist’s engagement with his works’ immediate surroundings and frequent allusion to the body itself.

Other key works in this presentation include Untitled (Also: Neon and Cloth) (1968), the artist’s first composition incorporating neon and juxtaposing the material’s hard form with soft strips of pastel-colored fabric. Like multiple works on view, Flocked Neon (1969) is realized in situ, as it embeds a neon arc within layers of latex slathered on the wall and sprinkled with flocking. Although Sonnier was attracted to the industrial, commercial nature of neon, the curvilinear forms and unconventional material combinations emphasize their idiosyncrasy as well as their sensual and psychological implications.

The exhibition culminates in Ba-O-Ba VI (Secondary Triad) and Dis-Play II, both of which were created for Sonnier’s first solo exhibition in New York at the Castelli Warehouse in 1970. Consisting of neon and sheets of foam stacked and propped against the wall, Ba-O-Ba VI (Secondary Triad) implicates the body and encourages movement through space and light. Scaling up this embodied experience, the installation Dis-Play II fills a darkened room with fluorescent pigments, foam volumes, and various artificial lights, overloading it with sensory stimuli.

“Our second engagement with Keith Sonnier, this haptic presentation of neon and multimedia works brings new energy and dynamism to the Dia Beacon galleries formerly dedicated to Dan Flavin’s fluorescent-tube sculptures, demonstrating how artists were mobilizing the medium of light toward palpably different ends. Furthermore, this exhibition holds a special significance as the last one Sonnier worked on directly. In proximity to fellow Rutgers alumni Lucas Samaras’s recently opened presentation, it also highlights the radically experimental practices emerging from the university during this fertile period,” said Jordan Carter, curator and co–department head.

Keith Sonnier is curated by Jordan Carter, curator and co–department head, with Min Sun Jeon, assistant curator.

All exhibitions at Dia are made possible by the Economou Exhibition Fund.

Keith Sonnier is made possible by support from James L. Cahn and Jeremiah J. Collatz, the David Schwartz Foundation, Inc., and those who wish to remain anonymous. 

About the artist

Keith Sonnier was born in Mamou, Louisiana, in 1941. His practice encompasses diverse media, including drawing, painting, sculpture, performance, and film. He received an MFA from Rutgers University in Brunswick, New Jersey, in 1966. Among Sonnier’s professors at Rutgers were Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Morris, George Segal, and many members of the Fluxus group such as Geoffrey Hendricks, Allan Kaprow, and Robert Watts. Upon graduation, Sonnier was included in several pathbreaking exhibitions, among them Eccentric Abstraction, Fischbach Gallery, New York (1966); 9 at Leo Castelli, Castelli Warehouse, New York (1968); Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form, Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland (1969); and Anti-Illusion: Procedures/Materials, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1969). His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at prominent venues including the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, the Netherlands (1970); Museum of Modern Art, New York (1971); Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia (1988); Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. (1989); Sprengel Museum, Hannover, Germany (1993); Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (1999); Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2002–03); Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, New York (2018–19); and New Orleans Museum of Art (2019). From 2018 to 2019, Dia Bridgehampton presented his room-size installation Dis-Play II (1970) alongside a selection of video and film works from the late 1960s and the ’70s. Sonnier died in Southampton, New York, in 2020. 

About Dia Art Foundation

Taking its name from the Greek word meaning “through,” Dia was established in 1974 with the mission to serve as a conduit for artists to realize ambitious new projects, unmediated by overt interpretation and uncurbed by the limitations of more traditional museums and galleries. Dia’s programming fosters contemplative and sustained consideration of a single artist’s body of work and its collection is distinguished by the deep and longstanding relationships that the nonprofit has cultivated with artists whose work came to prominence particularly in the 1960s and ’70s. 

In addition to Dia Beacon, Dia Bridgehampton, and Dia Chelsea, Dia maintains and operates a constellation of commissions, long-term installations, and site-specific projects, notably focused on Land art, nationally and internationally. These include: 

• 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, inaugurated in 1982 and ongoing), all located in New York
• De Maria’s The Lightning Field (1977), in western New Mexico
• Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970), in the Great Salt Lake, Utah
• Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels (1973–76), in the Great Basin Desert, Utah
• De Maria’s The Vertical Earth Kilometer (1977), in Kassel, Germany 
• Cameron Rowland’s Depreciation (2018)

For additional information or materials, contact: 

(U.S. press inquiries)

Hannah Gompertz, Dia Art Foundation, hgompertz@diaart.org, +1 212 293 5598
Melissa Parsoff, Parsoff Communications, mparsoff@parsoff-communications.com, +1 516 445 5899

(International press inquiries)
Sam Talbot, sam@sam-talbot.com, +44 (0) 772 5184 630