IMMA Collection: Brian O’Doherty Language and Space

IMMA is pleased to present IMMA Collection: Brian O’Doherty Language and Space, in association with fine art print studio Stoney Road Press, Dublin. The exhibition focuses on a selection of drawings, from the 1960s to the present day, from which Brian O’Doherty/Patrick Ireland and Stoney Road Press have published limited edition prints, as well as including a number of works by the artist from IMMA’s National Collection.

All of the works in the exhibition evoke the discourse between mind and body that has absorbed this extraordinary artist throughout his career. Many are inspired by Ogham script—an ancient Celtic translation of the Roman alphabet into a writing system of 20 linear characters. No Irish artist—or indeed any artist—has placed Ogham so centrally to his or her work as O’Doherty/Ireland. In the mid-1960s, the artist brought this 1,500 year old language into New York’s avant-garde dialogue, at a moment when the pared-down, geometric forms of minimalism gave way to conceptualism. He further condensed Ogham’s code to ontological concerns implicit in the words “ONE HERE NOW,” and focused on Ogham’s five vowels A O U E I: A = I, O = II, U = III, E = III, I = IIIII. In their linear appearance and implied sound, the vowels have been the basis for a vast range of drawings in various series and numerous sculptures since the 1960s, in what art critic Lucy Lippard has called “an amazing array of relationships.”

The eleven Structural Plays presented in the exhibition were originally created in the 1960s. This series of rendered grids and notational marks is inspired by language, Ogham’s lines and the game of chess. The Structural Plays are scripts for performances, borne from the artist’s investigation into the changed meaning of words via tone of voice and facial expressions.

The exhibition also includes a corner Rope Drawing—a unique expression the artist evolved in 1973 and of which he has installed almost 130 worldwide. Rope Drawings are arguably his most original and significant contribution to 20th century art.

Brian O’Doherty Language and Space marks the artist’s lifelong commitment to exploring line, language and perception. This exhibition coincides with the 10th anniversary of his performance The Burial of Patrick Ireland (1972-2008) at IMMA in 2008, in which Patrick Ireland, the artistic alias adopted by Brian O’Doherty in 1972, was waked and buried in a gesture of celebration of peace in Northern Ireland.

Brian O’Doherty/Patrick Ireland is one of the most complex and controversial figures to emanate from the American art scenes of the 1960s. A qualified medical doctor and emerging artist when he left Dublin in 1957, O’Doherty moved first to Boston and then to New York where he became a pioneering figure of Conceptualism. He produced many seminal works including Portrait of Marcel Duchamp (1966-67), a conceptual portrait based on a cardiogram of Duchamp’s hearteat, and the first “exhibition in a box,” the renowned Aspen 5+6 (1967), which can be seen in our concurrent IMMA Collection exhibition Coast-Lines. Author of the iconic Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of Space and Studio and Cube, his work has extraordinary legacy for contemporary art practice.