“NANCY HOLT: PERSPECTIVES”

DUNKUNSTHALLE

64 FULTON, NEW YORK, NY

NANCY HOLT: PERSPECTIVES

Curated by Lola Kramer

November 7 – December 7, 2023

Dunkunsthalle

64 Fulton Street

New York, NY 10038

Dunkunsthalle is pleased to present Nancy Holt: Perspectives, an exhibition dedicated to the innovative

moving image work of Nancy Holt. The selection highlights her collaborative process, including a

video made with her husband Robert Smithson, a video with the novelist and New York art critic Ted

Castle, and a film illustrating moments from the construction of Holt’s Sun Tunnels (1973-1976), a

monumental undertaking resulting in her iconic earthwork initiated fifty years ago. Holt’s pivotal film

and video works, beginning in the late 1960s, explore perception and systems through experiments

with point of view and process. Her engagement with the built and natural environment,

site-specificity and universal time, and the material conditions of perception–concerns that defined her

legacy – are brought to light here through the moving image.

Nancy Holt was a key figure in the New York art scene and is internationally recognized as one of the

foremost artists in the Earth, Land, and Conceptual Art movements. Her five-decade-long practice

included work in art, architecture, and time-based media that consistently examines how we attempt to

understand our place in the world. In opposition to other art historical categories, Holt preferred to

describe herself as a “perception artist.” Across various media, her work employed systems ranging

from the ecological, human, technological, and cosmological, and in ways that affirm our sense of

presence and connectivity. Although she is often primarily known for her site-specific installations,

such as Sun Tunnels (1973-76), a large-scale work located in the Great Basin Desert, Utah, her films and

videos have become landmarks of American experimental cinema and defining features of her legacy.

Holt was deeply involved in channeling perspective and instilling a sense of place. Her early videos,

including the cult favorite East Coast/ West Coast (1969) and Zeroing In (1973), underscore her

collaborative process and make conscious the act of seeing through distinctive methods to deconstruct

and reassemble perception. Holt’s Sun Tunnels (1978) depicts moments from the construction of her

iconic earthwork and is both documentation and an independent moving image work. Together, the

selection presents utterly current themes of ecology and the insolvable connections between all

systems, macro and micro, visible and invisible.

The works on show are:

Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson, East Coast/ West Coast, 1969

Video, 22 mins, b&w, sound

Holt and Smithson's first collaborative experiment with video takes the form of a humorous bi-coastal

art dialogue. Joined by Joan Jonas, the artists improvise a conversation based on opposing — and

stereotypical — positions of East and West Coast art of the late 1960s. Holt assumes the role of an

intellectual conceptual artist from New York, while Smithson plays the laid-back Californian driven by

feelings and instinct.

Nancy Holt, Zeroing In, 1973

Video, 31:15 mins, b&w, sound

Positioned in an elevated vantage point, Holt uses five apertures in a black board set before the video

camera to slowly reveal a controlled, abstracted view of an urban landscape. Discussing this New York

vista with Ted Castle, Holt strategically transforms passive reception into an interactive exchange.

Nancy Holt, Sun Tunnels, 1978

Digitized 16 mm film, 26:31 mins, color, sound

Sun Tunnels documents the making of Holt's major site-specific sculptural work in the northwest Utah

desert. Completed in 1976, the sculpture features a configuration of four large concrete tubes or

"tunnels" that are positioned to align with the sunrise and sunset of the summer and winter solstices.

With stunning footage of the changing sun and light as framed by the tubes, Sun Tunnels calls

attention to human scale and perception within the vast desert landscape.

This exhibition is the first in a series of monographic exhibitions at Dunkunsthalle, an artist-run

project space founded by Rachel Rossin in 2022, housed in a former Dunkin’ Donuts located at 64

Fulton in New York.

Presented in collaboration with Holt/Smithson Foundation, EAI, and with generous support from the

Gretchen Bender Estate.

Nancy Holt: Perspectives is curated by Lola Kramer, and commissioned by Dunkunsthalle.

To learn more about Nancy Holt’s work, please visit: holtsmithsonfoundation.org

About Nancy Holt:

Nancy Holt (Worcester, MA, 1938 – New York, 2014) was a key figure in the New York art scene and

is internationally recognized as one of the foremost artists in the Earth, Land, and Conceptual Art

movements. An innovator of site-specific installation and the moving image, Holt recalibrated the

limits of art. She expanded the places where art could be found and embraced the new media of her

time. Across five decades, she asked questions about how we might understand our place in the world,

investigating perception, systems, and site-specificity. Holt’s rich artistic output spans concrete poetry,

audioworks, film and video, photography, slideworks, ephemeral gestures, drawings, room-sized

installations, earthworks, artists’ books, and public sculpture commissions. Currently the major survey

of her work, Nancy Holt / Inside Outside, is on show at Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona

(MACBA) and Holt is included in the exhibition Groundswell: Women of Land Art at the Nasher

Sculpture Center, Dallas.

About Dunkunsthalle:

Dunkunsthalle is a not-for-profit arts foundation that champions critical dialogue around the role of

art in a divided America. Operating in the tradition of the European ‘kunsthalle’ model, we provide a

platform for new voices as well as historic artistic positions through rotating temporary exhibitions and

public programs that reflect the ways technology, consumer culture, and popular media increasingly

shape and define our reality. Dunkunsthalle was founded by artist Rachel Rossin who leads the

initiative alongside curator Julia Kaganskiy, who serves as acting director, and Danny Garfield.

Dunkunsthalle is located in a former Dunkin’ Donuts at 64 Fulton St, in New York City’s Financial

District.

We are actively looking for support and partnerships to support Dunkunsthalle. Want to help make these things happen? Write to me at lola [at] dunkunsthalle [dot] com.

More information here: https://www.dunkunsthalle.com/