Richard Nonas

P420 is pleased to present a solo exhibition dedicated to Richard Nonas (Brooklyn, 1936 - New York, 2021), the first at the gallery since the artist’s passing.

Richard Nonas was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1936, where he lived and worked. Following his education, Nonas worked as an anthropologist for 10 years, doing field-work on American Indians in Northern Ontario, Canada, and in Northern Mexico and Southern Arizona. He turned to sculpture in the mid-1960s at age 30. His anthropological work left a deep imprint that affected his sculptural practice and his engagement with the perception of space. Through a Minimalist vocabulary, Nonas developed a body of sculpture that engaged with the issue of place. In the 1970s, Nonas was a part of an intrepid group of artists and curators who found alternative places to show. His work involved the alteration of the environment and repeated geometric forms, and he came to see sculpture and space as interdependent carriers of deep philosophical and emotional meanings. Many of his works – made of such materials as timbers, linear beams, granite curbstones, and steel planes – serve to interrupt the space, calling attention to the non-specificity of the forms on the one hand, while creating a charged sense of space on the other.