American, 1935-2013. Conceptual and Land Art across minimalist sculpture, permanent room-installations, and large-scale outdoor works. Best known for The Lightning Field (1977), The New York Earth Room (1977), and Time/Timeless/No Time at Chichu (2004).
Encountered at Chichu Art Museum, Naoshima: Time/Timeless/No Time, the permanent installation in a Tadao Ando stone room. A 2.2-meter polished granite sphere on the floor, gold-leafed polygons on the walls, sunlight from above tracking the day across the sphere.
Grows from
- 留白 - the transcendent register, geometric and slow. The room as instrument.
Branches
- Chichu Art Museum, Naoshima - where I met him.
- Unknown - the outdoor De Maria on Naoshima, my re-encounter.
- Dia Beacon - holds his work too (Equal Area Series). Return to him when I go.
- The Lightning Field - the New Mexico pilgrimage. Queued.
Related seeds
- James Turrell - sibling at Chichu, parallel encounter. Both work with light, time, and the room.
The door - why it matters
It was confusing at first, but the scale of his art stunned me, especially during my re-encounter of his work Unknown near the water on Naoshima, where it just silently crept up to me with no notice.
Promotion candidate
If the Namjoon at Dia Beacon article (Dia’s companion post listing works that spoke to Namjoon) names De Maria among them, this is a candidate for promotion to Seed (convergence pattern, parallel to Cy Twombly). Check when reading the article.