Anthony McCall is known for his ‘solid-light’ installations, a series that he began in 1973 with “Line Describing a Cone,” in which a volumetric form composed of projected light slowly evolves in three-dimensional space.
Occupying a space between sculpture, cinema and drawing, his work’s historical importance has been recognized in such exhibitions as “Into the Light: the Projected Image in American Art 1964-77,” Whitney Museum of American Art (2001-2); “The Expanded Screen: Actions and Installations of the Sixties and Seventies,” Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna (2003-4); “The Expanded Eye,” Kunsthaus Zurich (2006); “Beyond Cinema: the Art of Projection,” Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2006-7); “The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality and the Projected Image,” Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC (2008); and “On Line,” Museum of Modern Art (2010-11).
McCall’s work has also been exhibited at, amongst others: Centre Pompidou, Paris (2004); Tate Britain, London (2004); SFMoMA (2007); Serpentine Gallery, London (2007-8); Hangar Bicocca, Milan (2009); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2009); Serralves, Porto (2011); Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2012); Kunstmuseum St Gallen – Lokremise (2013); Eye Film Museum, Amsterdam (2014); Lugano Arte e Cultura (2015); Pioneer Works (2018); Hepworth Wakefield (2018); and Albright Knox Art Gallery (2019).
Publications include “Anthony McCall: 1970s Works on Paper” (Ann Wagner, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Konig, 2013); “Anthony McCall: Notebooks & Conversations” (Graham Ellard and Stephen Johnstone, Lund Humphries, 2015); “Anthony McCall: Solid Light Works” (Luke Skrebowski, Antonio Somaini, SKIRA - Lugano Arte e Cultura, 2015); “Solid Light, Performance, and Public Works (Gloria Moure, Robert Hobbs, Ediciones Poligrafa Barcelona, 2016); “The Solid Light Films and Related Works” (Brandon W. Joseph, Jonathan Walley, Northwestern University Press, New Art Trust, 2005); “Five Minutes of Pure Sculpture” (Noam Elcott, Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum fur Gegenwart - Berlin, 2012).
Awards include the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, 2008; The Berlin Prize, Fellow of the American Academy in Berlin, 2014; Arts and Letters Award in Art, American Academy of Arts and Letters, 2015.
