Less Than One

The Walker Art Center is excited to announce the April 7 opening of Less Than One, an international group show offering in-depth presentations of work from the 1960s to the present by 16 artists central to the Walker’s collection. Included alongside such signature artworks as Sigmar Polke’s Mrs. Autumn and Her Two Daughters (1991) are major acquisitions on view for the first time, including Ericka Beckman’s film installation You The Better (1983/2015), Adrian Piper’s The Mythic Being: Sol’s Drawing #1–5 (1974), and Renée Green’s Bequest (1991), among other featured pieces.

The exhibition surveys a range of approaches—from painting and sculpture to drawing, installation, moving image, performance, and photography—sequencing compelling groupings of works by each artist that underscore the often provocative, historically charged, and risk-taking nature of the Walker’s multidisciplinary collection.

Less Than One is made possible by generous support from the Bentson Foundation and Donna and Jim Pohlad.

Opening week programs include:

Filmmakers in conversation: Ericka Beckman
Walker Cinema, Thursday, April 7, 7pm, free

Join experimental filmmaker Ericka Beckman and Jay Sanders, curator of performance at the Whitney Museum of American Art, for a discussion about Beckman’s films and performance-based work.

Opening weekend artist talk: Renée Green
Walker Cinema, April 9, 2pm, free with gallery admission

Artist Renée Green and Walker artistic director Fionn Meade discuss the evolution of her work and her installation Bequest (1991). She will also read from her recent collection of writings, Other Planes of There, and screen her latest film, Begin Again, Begin Again.

This program is made possible by generous support from Aaron and Carol Mack.


Walker premiere Moving Image Commission
Walker Channel, April 8–May 31

Premiering online April 8, the first season of the Ruben Bentson Moving Image Commissions will close with a new work by artist Leslie Thornton, They Were Just People (2016, video, 10 minutes). Inspired by the legacy of Bruce Conner within the Walker’s collections, the commission responds directly to Conner’s Crossroads (1976), highlighting the artists’ shared inquiry into appropriated material and the aesthetics of new technologies. All five Moving Image Commissions—including works by Moyra Davey, James Richards, Uri Aran and Shahryar Nashat—will be posted on the Walker Channel through May 31.

Leslie Thornton with James Richards: Exquisite Cinema
Walker Cinema, April 9, 7:30pm, free

Artists Leslie Thornton and James Richards present an exquisite corpse of found and original footage that includes the inaugural screening of Thornton’s They Were Just People (2016, video, 10 minutes), a chilling exploration of the purposing and repurposing of memory during wartime. Drawing on oral accounts of the aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing, it responds to artist Bruce Conner’s iconic film of the Bikini Atoll nuclear test, Crossroads (1976). Artistic director Fionn Meade joins the artists for a discussion about their curated reel and recently commissioned works. Thornton’s video is the third installment in the Moving Image Commissions, a series that addresses works by key artists in the Walker’s Ruben/Bentson Collection. Richards’s 2015 commission Radio at Night and his video Rosebud (2013) are on view in the exhibition Less Than One.

Major support for Walker Moving Image Commissions and to preserve, digitize, and present the Ruben/Bentson Moving Image Collection is provided by the Bentson Foundation.