Radical Bodies, Radical Minds and the Challenge of Measuring Space at David Nolan Gallery

Visiting the current show at David Nolan Gallery provides unique access to a series of artists’ conversations and exchanges that informed in the late 60s and 70s a series of pioneering practices in body and space, ultimately resulting in what art historians describe as “Process Art.” In the Upper East Side salon-like space of the gallery, hang and sit this month some of the most radical experimentations on the relations between space, geometries and the body, with photographs, videos and installations documenting these researches. Observer met with the dealer on an afternoon in late September, right after the craziness of Armory Week, to learn more about the current show and the close relations with the artists involved that inspired this exhibition.

When we arrived, David Nolan was deep in discussion with an assistant about organizing thousands of catalogs. But only a few minutes later, he was enthusiastically showing us vintage video installations featuring vanguard performances by Bruce Nauman, Barry Le Va and Richard Serra, discussing how they were originally conceived for the very devices in which they’re now presented. As the conversation unfolded, we agreed that these artists were all searching for more human-scaled ways of measuring space using their own bodies and endurance—testing the limits of movement and perception within an architectural volume where the human form is both compressed and expressed. Nolan titled the exhibition “Radical Artists from the 1960s/1970s: Between Gesture and Geometry” to highlight this interplay.

A compelling tension between human gesture and constructed space animates the entire exhibition as the artists on view grapple with this challenge: using their bodies to measure and shape space and translating these actions into a new form of consciousness through various media. Central to the show is the work of artists like Bruce Nauman, Barry Le Va and Richard Serra, who were among the first to emphasize the act of creation itself, the process, rather than the finished product, focusing on the relation between the body movements and actions over the final object.

Against the backdrop of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement, social change and art merged into a movement driven by a handful of artists now featured in this exhibition at David Nolan Gallery. Richard Serra’s short film Hand Catching Lead (1968) exemplifies this focus on the significance of a gesture, even when seemingly banal or purposeless, serving as a catalyst for interaction within space while challenging traditional conceptions of sculpture and film by rejecting linear or narrative structures. In the same room, Bruce Nauman’s Sound for Mapping the Studio Model (The Video) showcases the artist measuring space with his own body, transforming the studio into both a canvas and a medium for physical and ontological reflection.

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Accompanying the videos are drawings that highlight the mental and conceptual effort required to translate action into lines that can be visualized as space—imagined, conceived and experienced. Meanwhile, various photographs document the often absurd choreography behind these tests of endurance and the seemingly random nature of these practices. Barry Le Va’s video captures him running spasmodically between walls to perform an awareness of space that extends beyond physical reactions, touching on the sound and visual vibrations it can generate. Although these purposeless actions are typically absent from Le Va’s oeuvre, their presentation here is revealing, as it captures the process behind his more well-known works that similarly grapple with the notion of space and process over solid and stable sculpture.

When we consider how these artists attempted to measure space, we see that, by screening these performances on rudimentary devices or encapsulating them in photographs, they were measuring not only their physical presence but also their representation within the camera’s frame—the ratio and proportion of human existence contained within a boundary. This dual exploration of ontology and semiotics makes the exhibition especially resonant today, questioning how we perceive and measure a body’s presence in a room or on a screen and the medium by which we gauge this presence. What initially seems like a purely ’60s exploration of the interaction between body and space feels unexpectedly relevant as we grapple with orienting our bodies in the constant interplay between physical and digital realms that define modern life.

Within the historical context, these works can also be viewed as reactions against the Minimalist approach of shaping space through industrial forms and rigid elements. At the same time, they feel deeply rooted in the rapid urban development of cities like New York and Los Angeles in the late 60s, paralleling the frenzied pace of real estate expansion today. By the end of the decade, these “radical” artists—like their contemporaries in radical architecture—reestablished the body as the primary tool for measuring, assessing, and experiencing spatial and architectural environments, a shift that still resonates in the present moment.

Notably, the first room establishes a line of often unexpected connections between these artists’ practices, unraveling how their continuous conversation and exchange influenced the development of their works.

As Nolan recalls, after Barry Le Va passed away, he began planning a book on Le Va’s work. When he reached out to some of the artists close to him, Richard Serra immediately contributed a concise but beautiful text. Bruce Nauman, on the other hand, was initially hesitant but eventually shared a story during a phone call that Nolan transcribed. Nauman recounted how Barry Le Va once gave him an intense book, Corrections by Thomas Bernhard—philosophically and theoretically dense in the typical German fashion and not an easy read. Yet Nauman read it, and when they met for dinner, he was fully prepared to discuss it in depth with Le Va, showcasing the kind of communal exchange that drove their creative processes.

The entire second room features a reenactment of Barry Le Va’s disruptive Distribution Pieces from 1966. As Nolan guides us through, what might appear to be a haphazard scattering of broken glass is, in fact, a meticulously planned composition that explores chaos, structure, and space. It embodies Le Va’s vision of sculpture as a fluid, open entity situated within a dynamic, phenomenological world. “It’s chaos, but it’s ordered chaos,” Nolan explains. “There is always a strict plan. This work from 1968 involves three sheets of glass, and he gave instructions that they must be placed five feet from the wall so people can walk around them. There are precise instructions on how to lay out the piece. Then, four people lift the sheet of glass to their knees, and, on each side, they drop it and step away, and it shatters each time in a slightly different way. The texture varies, but the structure of the composition remains the same.” This work demonstrates how Le Va was already radically redefining the concept of sculpture, transforming it from a static structure into a composition of space—a process in motion that resembles the architecture of an act rather than the traditional notion of carving or molding forms.

While the show reveals fascinating connections and similarities between the gestures, drawings, and attitudes of these three renowned artists, it also highlights the practices of two other pioneers in this field, who may be less known but are certainly worth discovering.

Among them is Dorothea Rockburne, a pioneer known for her conceptual and disruptive approach to the canvas and other surfaces for representation. Embracing extreme conceptual rigor, Rockburne transforms paper and canvas into three-dimensional objects by folding them, finding depth in the lines that morph into space. Valeria, David Nolan’s wife, explains that Rockburne’s work is all about testing the possibilities of paper to adopt three-dimensional qualities through its interaction with texture, light, and shadow. These hanging sheets of paper already take on a new dimensionality through simple folds, creating spaces between the lines that turn into volume and shadow.

Throughout her career, Rockburne has redefined space and representation by focusing on the interplay between folds, mediums, and the light that animates them. As Nolan notes, her research evolved further with her study of Renaissance and Mannerist art, leading her recent works to explore a more spiritual and timeless harmony between colors, lines, and universal geometries. Now the subject of a recent market and institutional resurgence, her “Egyptian Series” pieces are currently priced in the six digits. Her recent explorations, often based on the golden ratio, resemble portals that open new possibilities for formal harmony, whether executed on paper or canvas. Rockburne recently received significant recognition at the Dia Foundation in Beacon, and her work, predominantly held in museum collections, is achieving rising market values.

We’re not permitted to discuss the other artists on view in detail, but the show also includes a piece by stanley brouwn, a seminal figure who engaged in similarly experimental explorations of body, movement, and physical space. His work remains largely unknown to most due to his strict policy of not sharing anything posthumously: no images or texts are allowed, wrapping his practice in an aura of mystery. Nolan met him in Amsterdam and recalls him as a brilliant genius in these poetics, the only Black American artist tackling such themes. But we have to stop here, per the artist’s wishes.

“Radical Artists from the 1960s/1970s: Between Gesture and Geometry” is on view at David Nolan Gallery through October 26.