Lawrence Weiner Lecture: The Writing on the Wall

Whether Lawrence Weiner’s works are glimpsed in a Florida shopping mall or a New York art museum—and Weiner’s wall-text works do in fact span such varied locales—his conceptualist art has remained fresh for over 40 years. At once resisting the marketplace and seducing monied art lovers, Weiner’s post-minimal modus operandi also continues to influence a new generation of artists and critical thinkers.

Given all this, Weiner’s likely to get a large turnout this week when he lectures in Toronto in advance of a solo show at the Power Plant. Though the show includes past works like 2001’s FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE or 1998’s MORE THAN ENOUGH—the latter here wittily transmuted onto the gallery’s smokestack—there is new work too. CUL-DE-SAC, produced for this 2009 exhibition, promises to address the Power Plant’s high walls and clerestory windows.

Toronto is a somewhat familiar place to Weiner; his first Toronto exhibition took place in 1977, when he produced one of his earliest soundwork installations, STRIKE WHILE THE IRON IS HOT. He’s also been involved with multiples at Art Metropole and shows at the David Bellman Gallery, the Art Gallery of Ontario and Ydessa Hendeles Art Foundation. His latest take on that city-artist interaction—delivered in person or otherwise—is not to be missed.