John Chamberlain: THE TIGHTER THEY'RE WOUND, THE HARDER THEY UNRAVEL Exhibition Guide
December 15, 2023–April 7, 2024
John Chamberlain: THE TIGHTER THEY’RE WOUND, THE HARDER THEY UNRAVEL curated by Urs Fischer
Aspen Art Museum
John Chamberlain: THE TIGHTER THEY’RE WOUND, THE HARDER THEY UNRAVEL is organized by the Aspen Art Museum in collaboration with Dia Art Foundation. The exhibition is curated by Urs Fischer, in collaboration with Nicola Lees, Nancy and Bob Magoon Director, and Daniel Merritt, Director of Curatorial Affairs. John Chamberlain: THE TIGHTER THEY’RE WOUND, THE HARDER THEY UNRAVEL is made possible with major support from Bank of America. Additional support is provided by Sasha and Edward P. Bass, Susan and Larry Marx, and Crozier. Special thanks to Hauser & Wirth. The Tighter They’re Wound, The Harder They Unravel: John Chamberlain Against The World is made possible by the generous support of Gagosian and the Aspen Art Museum Publication Circle.
Aspen Art Museum and Urs Fischer express their deepest gratitude to Prudence Fairweather, Alexandra Fairweather, Janet Goleas, and Angelo Piccozzi of the Estate of John Chamberlain. Special thanks to Jessica Morgan, Donna De Salvo, Humberto Moro, Elizabeth Peck, John Sprague and Courtney Smith of Dia Art Foundation as well as James Hendy and Paige Armstrong of Crozier. Aspen Art Museum thanks Annie Roff and Abby Haywood of Urs Fischer’s studio, as well as Koji Inoue, Kara Van Der Weg, and Amalia Dayan. Many thanks to the members of the AAM team: Eric Angus, Teresa Booth-Brown, Joey Domalic, Christine Egaña Navin, Rodney Hill, Courtney Kenny, Susan Martin, Roper Moreno, Tito Villa, Tess Weaver, Simone Krug, Zach Carver, and Erik Hesselman.
In a career extending over six decades, roving through big cities and quiet towns of the United States, artist John Chamberlain (1927–2011) generated a radical visual world in which motion, pressure, and color crystalize within manufactured objects. He is widely recognized for sculptures made from crushed automobile parts, a material the artist continually revisited throughout his career, though additional bodies of work, ranging in scale from monumental to miniature, are composed of foam, foil, resin, paper, steel, and dismantled appliances, amongst others. Developed in collaboration with Dia Art Foundation, THE TIGHTER THEY’RE WOUND, THE HARDER THEY UNRAVEL is the first institutional survey devoted to John Chamberlain in over a decade. The exhibition, which spreads across the museum’s three floors is divided into five groupings: The End and The Beginning; The Sixties and The Seventies; Foam and Galvanized Steel; Photographs; and The Line Up, Miniatures, and Models. Together, these categories tell a story of a relentlessly independent artist whose key motivation in artmaking was “to find out what you don’t know.” Pursuits of the unfamiliar governed Chamberlain’s life since childhood. Fascinated by aviation, Chamberlain learned to fly a plane at 11 and joined the United States Navy while underage during World War II. After a stint as a hairdresser, Chamberlain briefly enrolled at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he became acquainted with techniques of Abstract Expressionism, and later, Black Mountain College, where he began a lifelong engagement with words and poetry. These eclectic origins produced an artist who resisted categorization in an age of artistic movements, both eliding and incorporating contemporary philosophies of Pop Art, Action painting, and Minimalism. For Chamberlain, art was a means of engineering irregularities into equilibrium. With a characteristic irreverence and deadpan humor, he described his signature sculptural technique as “articulate wadding.”
These varied experiments in squeezing, folding, and compressing populate the galleries of the Aspen Art Museum. Devoted to towering late works placed in dialogue with some of Chamberlain’s rarely exhibited earliest sculptures, the museum’s second floor gallery merges a practice’s beginning and end. Across the ground floor, works primarily on loan from Dia Art Foundation mingle along East Hyman Avenue in a surreal street scene. Chamberlain’s foam works, considered a radical departure when first exhibited in 1965, congregate in an adjacent gallery. In the museum’s Lower Level, visitors are encouraged to immerse themselves in projections of Chamberlain’s psychedelic Wide-Lux photographs. Chamberlain’s camera was a near-constant companion, passively shooting panoramas from hip level. The result is a collection of disorienting quotidian scenes, as well as luminous shots of the artist’s life on the road, all of which mirror the alluring warp of his sculptures. This leads to a gallery devoted to Chamberlain’s miniatures, providing a bird’s-eye view of the artist’s material manipulations. On the occasion of the exhibition, Urs Fischer has produced a new artist book: The Tighter They’re Wound, The Harder They Unravel: John Chamberlain Against The World . The publication is a companion to the show, and visitors are encouraged to take a copy. In his introduction to the book, Fischer writes that “Artworks make us see the world in a new light. We associate.” As such, the book sees Chamberlain placed in dialogue with artistic predecessors, peers, and those who might be “descendants.”
Street Level
16
17
15
18
19
8
14
22
20
21
23
25
9
24
26
27
13
10
12
28
29
11
Second Level
7
6
1
5
3
2
4
1. WETSTARESCORT , 2011 Painted and chrome plated steel 138 1/2 × 85 1/4 × 75 in Private Collection
15. Stuffed Dog 9 , 1970 Urethane foam, cord, and paint 12 1/4 × 20 3/4 × 19 3/4 in
16. A , 1969–70 Urethane foam and paint 13 1/2 × 17 × 15 1/2 in
2. Rochester , 1958 Steel 47 × 77 × 9 in Private Collection
17. Stuffed Dog 4 , 1970 Urethane foam, cord, and paint 10 1/2 × 14 × 13 3/4 in
3. WITCHESOASIS , 2011 Painted and chrome-plated steel 84 1/2 × 89 × 75 in Private Collection 4 . TAMBOURINEFRAPPE , 2010 Painted and chrome-plated steel 116 3/4 × 90 × 86 1/2 in Private Collection. Courtesy of Gagosian
18. Soopad , 1967 Urethane foam and cord 34 × 44 × 33 in
19. Stuffed Dog 6 , 1970 Urethane foam, cord, and paint 11 1/4 × 15 1/4 × 14 1/4 in 20. Stuffed Dog 1 , 1967 Urethane foam, cord, and paint 7 × 10 × 9 1/2 in 21. Stuffed Dog 7 , 1970 Urethane foam, cord, and paint 10 1/2 × 15 × 14 5/8 in 22. Mesa , 1981 Urethane foam, wood, and rug 8 × 11 × 8 in 23. Stuffed Dog 8 , 1970 Urethane foam, cord, and paint 12 1/4 × 18 1/8 × 16 1/8 in
5. Projectile D.S.N.Y. , 1957 Steel 23 × 38 × 22 1/2 in Private Collection
6 . EUPHORIAINHAT , 2010 Painted and chrome-plated steel 92 × 67 5/8 × 55 1/4 in Private Collection. Courtesy of Gagosian
7. Cord , 1957 Steel 16 × 12 × 10 in Private Collection
8. Toy , 1961 Steel, paint, and plastic 53 1/2 × 38 1/2 × 30 1/2 in Art Institute of Chicago. Gift of William Hokin 9. Dan Flavin “monument” for V. Tatlin , 1966 Fluorescent light and metal fixtures 120 × 28 × 5 in 10. The Hot Lady from Bristol , 1979 Painted and chrome-plated steel 83 × 51 × 50 in 11. Three-Cornered Desire , 1979 Painted and chrome-plated steel 70 × 103 × 70 in
24. Lop Nor , 1967 Urethane foam and cord 37 × 51 × 50 in
25. Stuffed Dog 2 , 1970 Urethane foam, cord, paint, and lead weights 9 7/8 × 12 5/8 × 10 3/4 in
26. Stuffed Dog 3 , 1970 Urethane foam, cord, and paint 8 1/2 × 14 1/2 × 13 in 27. Stuffed Dog 5 , 1970 Urethane foam, cord, and paint 11 × 13 × 12 in 28. Ultrafull Private , 1967 Steel and galvanized steel 66 3/4 × 54 1/4 × 57 1/2 in 29. Royal Ventor , 1967 Galvanized steel, steel, aluminum 61 3/8 × 57 1/8 × 46 1/2 in
12. Coup d’Soup , 1980 Painted steel 120 × 28 × 5 in
13. Hidden Face , 1962 Painted and chrome-plated steel 41 × 50 × 33 1/2 in 14. Norma Jean Risen , 1967/1984 Galvanized steel, acrylic paint 66 × 38 × 38 in
All works courtesy Dia Art Foundation
Unless otherwise noted, all works appear courtesy Dia Art Foundation
Lower Level
48 47 46 45 44 43 42 41 40 39 38 37 36 35 34 33 32 31 30
49
50
On pedestal
30. Penthouse Series , 1969 Paper and resin 5 × 6 × 4 in
46. SPHINX GRIN , 1986 Aluminum foil 5 1/2 × 5 1/2 × 3 in 47. LUCKYEGYPT , 1986 Aluminum foil 5 3/4 × 3 1/2 × 2 in 48. WINGINGSATIRE , 1986 Aluminum foil 3 3/4 × 5 1/4 × 2 in
31. Untitled, 1973 Foam and resin 5 × 8 × 7 3/4 in
32. MISSIFNIFF , 1969 Painted steel 12 1/2 × 18 1/2 × 8 1/2 in 33. Mermaid , 1988 Cookie tin 6 × 9 1/2 × 4 in 34. MISHEGAS , 1988 Tin 3 1/2 × 4 1/2 × 3 1/2 in
49. The Line Up (Dedicated to the Sarasota Police Department) , 1982 Painted and chromium-plated steel
81 × 198 × 49 in Dia Art Foundation
Unless otherwise noted, all works private collection
35. Cherry , 1988 Tin 6 1/4 × 6 × 5 in
50. Wiley’s Island III , 1997 Foam and muslin 100 × 156 × 44 in Private Collection
36. FRANTICCALMNESS , Date unknown Steel 6 × 2 × 1/2 in
On walls: Projected Photographs by John Chamberlain, 1989–2007 Developed in collaboration with the Estate of John Chamberlain. Special thanks to Janet Goleas and Angelo Piccozzi
37. Untitled, 1986 10 1/2 × 2 × 11/2 in Colored aluminum foil 38. Untitled, 1986 Colored aluminum foil 10 1/2 × 3 × 2 3/4 in 39. Untitled, 1986 Colored aluminum foil 9 1/2 × 2 1/2 × 1 1/2 in 40. Untitled, 1986 Colored aluminum foil 9 1/2 × 2 3/4 × 2 in 41. Untitled, 1986 Colored aluminum foil 10 × 4 1/2 × 1 3/4 in
42. Untitled, 1986 Aluminum foil 13 1/2 × 1 × 3/4 in
43. Untitled, 1986 Colored aluminum foil 12 × 2 3/4 × 3/4 in 44. Tonk #9-88 , 1988 Model train car 4 × 14 × 5 in 45. Tonk , 1988 Tonka truck 3 3/4 × 6 3/4 × 3 1/2 in
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Accredited by the American Alliance of Museums in 1979, the Aspen Art Museum is a thriving and globally engaged non-collecting contemporary art museum. Following the 2014 opening of the museum’s facility designed by Pritzker Prize–winning architect Shigeru Ban, the AAM enjoys increased attendance, renewed civic interaction, and international media attention. In July 2017, the AAM was one of ten institutions to receive the United States’ National Medal for Museum and Library Services for its educational outreach to rural communities in Colorado’s Roaring Fork Valley and its fostering of learning partnerships with civic and cultural partners within a 100-mile radius of the museum’s Aspen location.
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Aspen Art Museum exhibitions are made possible by the Marx Exhibition Fund. General exhibition support is provided by the Toby Devan Lewis Visiting Artist Fund. Additional support is provided by the Aspen Art Museum National Council.
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