In an excerpt from her forthcoming book, Support Structures (published by Sternberg Press), artist/architect Celine Condorelli presents one of the most unorthodox and experimental exhibitions in New York’s history, organized and curated by Peter Nadin and taking place in his studio over a period of 9 months.

Throughout the course of 1978-79, artists including Daniel Buren, Peter Fend, Dan Graham, Louise Lawler, Sean Scully and Lawrence Weiner were invited to install shows in the gallery space, without removing the work already there, responding to each other and to ‘existing conditions’; in this way the work shown in this space is a response to the existing conditions and/or work previously shown within the space redefines the exhibition as an entity capable of dynamic, cumulative evolution.

In 1978–1979, the Peter Nadin Gallery had a continuous exhibition titled The work shown in this space is a response to the existing conditions and / or work previously shown within the space. Artists included Daniel Buren, Peter Fend, Dan Graham, Louise Lawler, Sean Scully and Lawrence Weiner, and the artists directly responded to each others’ work, developing a cumulative environment.

The project began with the text “We have joined together to execute functional constructions and to alter or refurbish existing structures as a means of surviving in a capitalist economy”. The exhibition started with the ‘empty’ gallery space and newly constructed wall elements (by Nadin and D’Arcangelo) and was followed by the series of ‘solo’ projects which, responding to existing, and yet constantly changing conditions, were layered in time and space until the gallery was closed eight months later, following D’Arcangelo’s untimely death.

“Iron lungs in any space are strange, and also it didn’t stay there, but was just brought in to make a point that Peter wanted to make, about a room defined not by its walls, but by a pump. And the way sounds, and words, staggered on the way, imitating the way you’d breathe it if you were in an iron lung: “AROOM … DEFIN … EDNOT … BYITS … WALLS … BUTBY … APUMP”.

And you have all these ideas of space as stuff, and it was more or less an aesthetic exercise in what to think about space … Where space in this case is a solid, is a gas, is elastic; it can be inflated, it can be contracted; it’s in your body, you’re inside the space. It was actually quite important that there would be this Buren, and this Scully, that something had happened to the walls, that something was happening to the space … and you see the little chips … the vertical stripes of Buren, and the Scully’s horizontal stripes. The space has already been somehow ‘occupied’. In which case, the iron lung becomes an additional occupation practice.” — Peter Fend in conversation with Gavin Wade at Eastside Projects, 1 February 2008.

“There is something fascinating about the making of walls, and especially sheet rock walls. When you finish you have erased yourself from it, when you do a good job you leave no traces, and it is only when you do a lousy job that you have all these marks on it; this creates an interesting dilemma in relationship to making art, which should in a way be exactly the opposite: you need to be in the work. We were artists and we did construction work, this is just what we did, what we spent our time doing, and there was a great dignity to it. But walls don’t stay as walls, things happen to them, things are put on them. So why not let the thing evolve, let it continue, and see what happens? The space was my studio, but was also where I lived, so we built a showing space, and the first thing we showed, was just the space. That sentence we started with (‘30 days work …’) is a very straightforward measure of the work we did.

And then we invited artists — Daniel Buren first and then Sean Scully. I told them to do whatever they wanted, the idea being that there would be a succession of exchanges or interactions. The gallery situation seemed silly in a sense: why does everything always leave every month? What is it with the monthly cycle, of putting up work, taking it down, putting it up … Why not leave it there, and just put some other stuff in there? Why does it need to have this false sense of erasure?

Louise Lawler was very important in the setting up of the gallery and the evolution … In Sean’s painting, you can’t really see it in the picture, there is a peep hole, and through the hole what do you see? You see me! Living in the back. The peephole piece was the work of Jane Reynolds in Sean Scully’s painting. I think the brilliance of her response was taking the viewer through Sean’s painting into the room beyond so the surface was not the destination but part of a continuity. And then Fend brought the Iron Lung which in terms of a response to the space was great, because it used cubic volume, rather than the walls. And we also brought in Glenn Branca, Rhys Chatham and a couple of other people, and what they did was, that the noise was so extreme, that it made the space appear to be solid. So it was like being in a solid cube of sound.” — Peter Nadin in conversation with Céline Condorelli at Nadin’s home in Lower Manhattan, 12 July 2009.

The text and images in this article are taken from ‘Support Structures’ by Celine Condorelli, published by Sternberg Press, released in December 2009.