ABSTRACT
In his work of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Barry Le Va’s concern for process, and the event of the work’s production and reception, gave rise to object-based art which could be read in terms of theatre or performance. In his scatterpieces, first presented in 1966, and his introduction of progressively less controllable materials in his three-dimensional work from 1968, Le Va came to present the viewer with arrangements of unconventional materials, such as flour, chalk, glass or oil, which invited readings through their tracing out of an earlier action or event. Following studies in mathematics and architecture, Le Va had studied fine art of the Otis Art Institute of Los Angeles County, graduating in 1967. In 1968 his work was featured prominently in Art forum and in 1969 his first solo exhibition was shown at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. In the same year, Le Va showed the Velocity Piece, a stereo installation tracing out his earlier occupation of the gallery space. In 1970, he moved to New York, where he continues to develop work through a variety of media. In 1988, the Rijksmuseum Kroller-Muller, the Netherlands, presented a twenty-year retrospective of Barry Le Va’s work. This interview was recorded in New York in March 1993, and the text was edited by the author and subsequently revised and developed by Barry Le Va during the summer of 1994.
