Dimensions
104 x 153 x 6mm
James Lee Byars was an artist specialising in installation sculpture and performance art. Hi work was minimal and conceptual and stressed questions over answers, absence over presence and a lush momentary experience of beauty over permanence. This small formerly unknown archive from the Dieter Hacker Collection is a singular eyot or time-space in the life of James Lee Byars, who, like his friend Joseph Beuys, was a magisterial lifelong mythmaker and an alchemist of the imagination. What he lived he transformed as regards his understanding of human nature, which means that he affected distinguishing characteristics, including ways of thinking, feeling, and acting, which all humans are able to experience, but he did so independently of the influence and immediate conventions imposed by the strictures of the everyday culture around him. This small archive is a result of this exhibition a secret no more, but for all that it is a unique peephole and insight into the scope of the artist James Lee Byars. Text in English and German. 30 colour illustrations
