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Glen Seator
Seator in 1993
Born(1956-06-05)June 5, 1956
Beardstown, Illinois
DiedDecember 21, 2002(2002-12-21) (aged 46)
Brooklyn, New York
EducationMassachusetts College of Art and SUNY Purchase
Known forinstallation art, sculpture, photography
AwardsLouis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Soros Foundation, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation

Glen Seator (1956—2002) was an American visual artist and conceptual sculptor. He lived in Brooklyn, NY and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

Early life

Born Glen Thomas Seator in 1956 in Beardstown, Illinois to mother, Dr. Lynette Hubbard Seator (d. 2012), a professor of Modern Languages, and father Gordon Douglas Seator (d. 1988), a judge. While growing up his family lived in the small community of Mount Sterling.[1] During his lifetime, Seator had three sisters, Patricia, Penelope and Pamela.[2]

Education

Seator attended high school in Jacksonville, Illinois, where he skipped a year. Upon graduation, he used earnings from minimum-wage employment to travel throughout the world for nine months.[1] Seator received an MFA from SUNY Purchase in 1989, and a BFA at the Massachusetts College of Art, Boston in 1984.[1] Prior to that he attended the Cooper Union, New York, from 1981–1982.[3]

Career and exhibitions

Seator was well known in the 1990s and early 2000s for his architecture-inspired installations and architectural interventions. Seator's work has been compared to other conceptual sculptors, Robert Gober and Charles Ray and has affinities to some of the work of Bruce Nauman.[1] In his full-scale architectural reconstructions, the artist addressed the delicate balance of place, power and position.[1] In an interview with the architectural historian, Anthony Vidler, Seator stated that a primary influence was the work of Gordon Matta Clark.[4] The art historian Adam Weinberg has written that Seator's sculptural work had "a dramatic kinesthetic effect which may bring on vertigo."[5]

Seator also produced sculptural procedure-based process artworks, such as the sweep-action piece, Untitled Auditorium Installation (1993) at MoMA PS1 in Queens, NY,[6] as well as the transformation of a townhouse he owned in the historical neighborhood of Vinegar Hill, Brooklyn into a work of installation art.[3] Seator also created large panoramic photo-installations dealing with the landscape and "emptiness" of the desert; the vernacular architecture of Echo Park, Los Angeles and the pristine architectural storefronts of Beverly Hills, California.[3][7] Seator's first solo exhibition was in New York, followed by major installations in Warsaw, Vienna, San Francisco, London and Basel.[8] In 2000-2001 his work was featured in a two-person exhibition, The Architectural Unconscious: James Casebere and Glen Seator, at the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. The show traveled to the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia.[5]

Seator's first one-person shows were held in New York City in 1991, at the SculptureCenter and Art in General.[1] He went on to have solo exhibitions at the Kunstraum Wien, Vienna, Austria; Kunsthalle Basel; White Columns; and at several art galleries including Jay Joplin/White Cube, London; Burnett Miller Gallery, Los Angeles; and Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles. His work was included in group exhibitions at Mary Boone Gallery, New York; Greene Naftali Gallery, New York; the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY among others.[3]

His most recent work at the time of his death were large-scale panoramic landscape and urban street-scene photographs.[1][3]

Significant works

Interrupted Sweeping, (1993). At PS1 Museum in Long Island City, Queens, Seator enacted a long-term procedural action in which he used sweeping compound to sweep the floor of the auditorium gallery. In time, the piles accumulated into larger and larger arrays of material. These piles of material held in a "perpetual state of interuption" were individually lit from the grid of ceiling lights that had been lowered on cords to hover just above the piles of dirt.[9]

Preventative Measures, (1994). Installation at the National Gallery of Contemporary Art (Zaçheta), in Warsaw, Poland,[10] Seator meticulously covered the ornate Neo-Renaissance-style salon walls with horizontal strips of masking tape, creating "an etherial yet overwhelming image of itself." The installation covered 8,000 square feet of wall space.[9]

Glen Seator, B.D.O. (Biennial Director's Office (1997), collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art

N.Y.O. + B. (New York Office and Ballroom), (1996). Commissioned by the New York Kunsthalle, was a full-scale replication of an office and bathroom, tilted on its side.[11] The 10,000 pound off-kilter structure was anchored to the floor with three steel cables.[12] In his essay, Glen Seator's Daring Desiring Machines art critic Terry R. Myers describes the work as "dangerous miminalism," and compares Seator's work to that of Bruce Nauman and Michael Asher.[9]

B.D.O. (Breuer Director's Office), (1997). Installation commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art for the 1997 Whitney Biennial, was a reconstruction of a full-scale office tilted at a 45-degree angle; an exact replication of the museum director's office.[4] Art critic David Joselit wrote that the artwork enabled spectators to "carefully scrutinize" reality.[3] Viewing the installation gave the audience a sense of disorientation and dizziness.[1]

Approach, (1997). Commissioned by the Capp Street Project, San Francisco, and replicated a full-scale elevated version of the street outside the gallery.[4][13][14] Seator recreated every micro-detail of the outside street, including sidewalk cracks with bits of grass, chipped red curb paint, and graffiti on a telephone pole. The installation was created from 150 tons of concrete, asphalt and other building materials.[15] In addition to the street scene, Seator also replicated the front exterior western facade of the gallery inside the gallery.[16]

Fifteen Sixty One, (1999). Commissioned by the Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills, CA, in 1999, was an exact replica of a check-cashing store located in a Latino neighborhood on Sunset Boulevard.[4] The installation was one of three works created specifically for the gallery in a solo exhibition entitled, Three.[3] The project highlighted the economic disparity between Beverly Hills and the Latino neighborhood.[3]

Places for Balanced Sculptures, (2000). Commissioned by the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts and the Institute of Fine Arts|Institute of Fine Art, Philadelphia, was composed of three large-scale sculptural corner forms, each balanced on point. Seator replicated to scale a corner of the USAirways terminal at Boston Logan Airport; a corner of the Addison Gallery; and a corner of the Friendly's sandwich and ice cream shop in Andover. While this work references Gordon Matta Clark, it is distinct from it in that Seator reconstructs architectural fragments in an additive manner, whereas Clark cut off and represented fragments through a subtractive process of selective demolition.[5]

This by the Light of That (2001-2002). A collaborative project with the Canadian designer Bruce Mau at Schindler House, designed by the architect Rudolph Schindler. The exhibition was sponsored by the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, incorporating neon signage, typography and language, and included a series of mass-media print forms including 25 outdoor art billboards.[17] The project critiqued the advertising industry, and shed light on the role of corporate identity.[18] In 2002, Hatje Cantz Publishers in conjunction with the MAK Center published the book, Glen Seator: Moving Still, documenting a decade of his work.

Awards and honors

Seator was awarded grants and fellowships from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation,[19] the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Soros Foundation, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in 2000.[20][7] The Getty Museum Institute honored him a Scholar-in-Residence from 2000–2001.[1] He received a fellowship from the Edward F. Albee Foundation in 1990.[21] His work was the subject of a symposium, Moving Things, Moving Places: The Work of artist Glen Seator, at the Getty Research Institute of the Getty Museum in 2002.[1][7] He received two fellowships from the MacDowell Colony in 1990 and 1994.[22]

Collections

Seator's work is included in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art,[23] the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,[24] among other public and private collections.[7]

Death

In December 2002, Seator died in an accidental fall from his roof while repairing the chimney of his three-story townhouse located at 12 Duffield Street in Brooklyn, New York.[1][25]

Legacy

The 12 Duffield Glen Seator Foundation was established in 2004, and has been working with Steidl Verlag Publishers on a catalogue raisonné of his work, to be titled, Glen Seator: Making Things Moving Places.[26]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Johnson, Ken (30 December 2002). "Glen Seator, 46, Whose Sculptures Replicated Rooms, Dies". The New York Times. Retrieved 27 December 2018.
  2. ^ "Seator, Glen". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 1 January 2019.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h Pallister, Kay; Joselit, David; Myers, Terry R. (2000). Glen Seator: Three. New York and Los Angeles: Gagosian Gallery. ISBN 1880154307.
  4. ^ a b c d Vidler, Anthony (1 July 2002). "Interview with Glen Seator by Anthony Vidler". BOMB (80). Retrieved 27 December 2018.
  5. ^ a b c Weinberg, Adam; Wigley, Mark; Vidler, Anthony (2000). The Architectural Unconscious: James Casebere and Glen Seator. Andover, MA: Addison Gallery of American Art. ISBN 1879886464.
  6. ^ "Glen Seator: Sleepless Nights". MoMA PS1. Museum of Modern Art, New York. Retrieved 4 November 2019.
  7. ^ a b c d "Glen Seator Symposium". The Getty Research Institute. Retrieved 29 December 2018.
  8. ^ "Glen Seator, 46; Sculpted Replicas". Los Angeles Times. 2 January 2003. Retrieved 29 December 2018.
  9. ^ a b c Myers, Terry R. (1999). "Glen Seator's Daring Desiring Machines" in Glen Seator: Three. Los Angeles: Gagosian. pp. 41–48. ISBN 1-880154-30-7.
  10. ^ "Construction in Process". World Art: The Magazine of Contemporary Visual Art: 88. 1995.
  11. ^ Stevens, Mark (March 31, 1997). "The Ends of Art". New York Magazine. 30 (12): 88. Retrieved 4 November 2019.
  12. ^ Ostrow, Saul (January 1, 1997). "Glen Seator". BOMB Magazine. 58. Retrieved 15 June 2020.
  13. ^ "Reviews: Glen Seator, Capp Street Project". Sculpture Magazine. 16 (6). July–August 1997. Retrieved 27 December 2018.
  14. ^ "Approach: Glen Seator". VAULT: California College of the Arts. Retrieved 15 June 2020.
  15. ^ Hymen, Erin. "Tracing a History of Architecture Installations in the Bay Area". TraceSF: Bay Area Urbanism. Retrieved 29 June 2020.
  16. ^ Baker, Kenneth (February 1, 1997). "Genuine Street Art / Artist's project a concrete success at Capp Street". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 29 June 2020.
  17. ^ "GLEN SEATOR / BRUCE MAU This by the Light of That ..." MAK Öffnungszeiten Museum. Retrieved 16 June 2020.
  18. ^ "Glen Seator/Bruce Mau: This by the Light of That..." MAK. Retrieved 4 November 2019.
  19. ^ "1997 Awards". The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation. Retrieved 4 November 2019.
  20. ^ "Glen Seator". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Retrieved 27 December 2018.
  21. ^ "Albee Fellows: 1990". The Edward F. Albee Foundation. Retrieved 27 December 2018.
  22. ^ "Visual Artist: Glen Seator". MacDowell Colony. Retrieved 4 November 2019.
  23. ^ "Glen Seator". Whitney Museum of American Art. Retrieved 4 November 2019.
  24. ^ "Glen Seator: Making Things Moving Places". Steidl Verlag, Germany. Retrieved 4 November 2019.
  25. ^ "American Sculptor Glen Seator, 46, Dies". Art Daily. Retrieved 29 December 2018.
  26. ^ "Seator Foundation Launched". ArtNet News 11/18/04. ArtNet. Retrieved 4 November 2019.

See also

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