CALIFORNIA CONCEPTUAL ART

Influenced by the social upheavals of California in the 1960s and attracted to the philosophical ideas of the Far East, as well as being situated far away from the New York art market, artists like Paul Kos, Tony Labat, Dennis Oppenheim, Terry Fox, Tom Marioni and Bruce Nauman from the Bay Area around San Francisco, joined together to form the group California Conceptual Art.

Thanks to their novel and creative forms of expression and use of new media, incorporating works on video as well as performance and installation art, for which transitory and mutable materials were used (such as ice or dust), their collective focus was directed on the concept and the idea of the artistic endeavor as something interconnected with a specific situation and place, rather than towards the commercialization or marketing of the artwork itself. For this reason it was primarily the ephemeral and transitory artworks within the group’s oeuvre that achieved a new significance in terms of their poetic-narrative approach.

Paul Kos and Tony Labat, two of the primary figures deriving from the San Francisco scene of the time, will exhibit from 16th January to 28th February 2009 a selection of their objects, installations and projects within the rooms of the dell’ar/ge kunst Gallery Museum of Bolzano. For this show the two artists have also specifically created some new works.
Several generations of artists have until today been influenced by these two artists, who also teach at the San Francisco Art Institute.