OUT OF SIGHT
Lawrence Weiner

OUT OF SIGHT is a site-specific participatory floor installation by the American artist Lawrence Weiner. Using poetic passages of text and graphic visualization, this work engages with people and encourages a dialogue that transcends boundaries. Reminiscent of a game of hopscotch at first glance, OUT OF SIGHT radiates courage and inspiration and invites nimble-footed contemplation. Weiner’s unmistakable typographic text-based works—presented indoors and outdoors, on façades, walls, and floors, in parks, in urban squares, in museums and in schools, as projections and performances—unite thought processes with physical experiences. Sentences like SPIT INTO THE WIND AND HOPE FOR THE BEST and IMAGINED THINGS CAN BE ALTERED TO SUIT, as well as the installation‘s central terms EXUBERANCE, ENERGY, HAPPINESS, VISION, VISUALIZATION, ENLIGHTENMENT, SPONTANEITY, and SERENDIPITY, stand for openness to the world, for optimism in difficult times, for self-determination, for solidarity in a society characterized by alienation, for equal opportunities, and for broad possibilities and creative leeway.

OUT OF SIGHT is more than just an artwork; OUT OF SIGHT is an aesthetic experience, a transgenerational encounter. OUT OF SIGHT is a work for everyone. OUT OF SIGHT has been translated into many languages including English, Spanish, Mandarin, Dutch, French, and Portuguese, and it is now being realized in German for the first time on the ALBERTINA Museum’s Bastion Terrace. This installation has been shown at venues including the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2017), the Perez Art Museum, Miami (2017), the Chicago Park District (2018, 2019, 2020) the National Gallery Singapore (2021), the Fort Mason Center for the Arts and Culture, San Francisco (2021), and in many other places worldwide.

About LAWRENCE WEINER

Lawrence Weiner (10 February 1942 – 2 December 2021) was a seminal figure in the world of conceptual art from the 1960s all the way up to his recent death. In his site-specific sculptures, he constantly strove to bring out the power of language as such. In Vienna, he became known particularly due to the controversy surrounding his work SMASHED TO PIECES (IN THE STILL OF THE NIGHT) (1991–2019) for the façade of the flak tower that stands in the Esterhazypark in Vienna’s sixth district. He was posthumously awarded the Oskar Kokoschka Prize in 2022.