Lawrence Weiner’s textual works have nonspecific installation instructions, making them endlessly adaptive to the circumstances of each venue and able to be resituated in countless possible manifestations. At Dia Center for the Arts, Weiner resituated a section of his 1969 Statement of Intent, which has since been reformatted and installed for long-term view at Dia:Beacon. The 1991–92 exhibition also presented two new text works, Bits & Pieces Put Together to Present a Semblance of a Whole and CADMIUM & MUD & TITANIUM & LEAD & FERROUS OXIDE & SO ON . . . , both of which have been resituated in multiple other venues, the latter of which most recently installed at Dia:Beacon. For his work at Dia, Weiner produced his texts in two formats—a gallery installation and a book. This interdependence between book and exhibition, moving text between the printed page and large-scale site-specific mountings, has become a motif of Weiner’s career. 

Lawrence Weiner was born in New York City in 1942. He died in New York City in 2021.

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