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Exchange

Robert Morris

1973 00:36:02 United StatesEnglishB&WMono
Tags:
Feminism , Performance , Video History

Description

In 1972, Robert Morris and Lynda Benglis agreed to exchange videos in order to develop a dialogue between each other’s work. Morris’s video, Exchange, is a part of that process—a response to Benglis’s Mumble. At the beginning of the piece, Morris comments on the nature of the collaboration, their interaction, and what they represent to each other. Morris’s speculations about work, travel, and relationships are juxtaposed with frozen images of race cars, Benglis herself, images from Benglis's video, and Manet’s Olympia. An asymmetry of elements forms as the video moves from the professional towards the personal—a shift that gives the work humanity and, concerning the development of early conceptual video, its unique historical importance.

This title was in the original Castelli-Sonnabend video art collection.

This title is also available on Surveying the First Decade: Volume 1.

About Robert Morris

Robert Morris studied at the University of Kansas, Kansas City Art Institute, and Reed College. Well known in the early 1960s for his minimalist sculptures, Morris marked the transition to a post-minimalist sensibility by reintroducing everyday processes into his sculptural works and producing critical texts that provided the movement with a theoretical foundation ("Notes on Sculpture" series, Artforum).

In 1968, Morris organized 9 at Leo Castelli, one of the first exhibitions of post-minimalist, anti-formalist art which featured the work of Eva Hesse, Richard Serra, Keith Sonnier, and Bruce Nauman, among others. Through the E.A.T. (Experiments in Art and Technology) project, Morris worked briefly in film and video in the late '60s and early '70s, employing structural devices such as layering, framing, and mirroring in an examination of the medium's distinct features and its use as means of communication (Exchange, 1973).

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