Lawrence Weiner
HERE THERE & EVERYWHERE
1989
Not on view
Date
1989
Classification
Installations
Medium
Language + the materials referred to
Dimensions
Dimensions variable
Accession number
94.136
Credit line
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Contemporary Painting and Sculpture Committee
Rights and reproductions
©Lawrence Weiner/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Lawrence Weiner was among the first generation of Conceptual artists who prioritized ideas over visual images and forms, and treated language as a material. Indeed, Weiner refers to his works as sculptures composed of “language and the materials referred to.” Here There & Everywhere consists of eight lines of text, comprising a chorus and refrain of four directionally related statements. The open-endedness of Weiner’s text is echoed by the guidelines for its installation, which allow the work’s form to be determined by the curator and the specificity of the architectural space: the text can be installed either on four separate walls or together on a single vertical surface. Art is like language, Weiner reminds us, and is not fixed in its significance, but subject to change according to “various manners with various things.”
