Mary Lucier

Media Relay: An Exhibition in Two Parts presented by the National Academy of Design at PS122 (2022)

How Can We Think of Art At A Time Like This at Art At A Time Like This (2020)

Songs for Spirit Lake at the Rauschenberg Foundation Project Space, the North Dakota Museum of Art and the Cankdeska Cikana Community College (2013–2014)

Two Monzeki Spaces at Takashimaya Exhibition Hall (2011)

Her work continued to investigate various aspects of the landscape and its diverse peoples into the 21st century including works such as The Plains of Sweet Regret (2004) a 5-channel video installation examining the Great Plains at a time of depopulation and in Drum Songs (2013) and (Untitled) Spirit Lake (2017) she examines Native American song and dance from the Cankdeska Cikana Singers and Drummers.

Illusions of Eden: Visions of the American Heartland at Museum of Modern Art/Ludwig Foundation, Ludwig Museum Budapest, Museum the Columbus Museum of Art and Madison Art Center (2000–2001)

Video Cult/ures at ZKM Museum für Neue Kunst (1999)

Landscape: Mediated Views at the Visual Studies Workshop (1998)

Living With Contemporary Art at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (1995–1996)

Gazing Back: Shigeko Kubota and Mary Lucier at the Whitney Museum of American Art (1995)

Facing Eden: 100 Years of Landscape Art in the Bay Area at the De Young Museum (1994)

In the 1990s, Lucier would investigate the more devastating aspects of the earth’s landscapes by comparing the ecological precarity of the Brazilian Amazon and Alaskan wildlife with the cancerous human body in Noah’s Raven (1993) and examining the tragedy of flooding through recollections and ruined interiors in Floodsongs (1998).

Femmes Cathodiques at the Palais de tokyo, Musee d'art moderne de Paris (1989)

Lucier has been the recipient of many awards and fellowships, including the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in 1985, the Rockefeller Foundation in 2001, Creative Capital in 2001, Anonymous Was a Woman in 1998, the Nancy Graves Foundation in 2003, USA Artists in 2010, the American Film Institute Independent Filmmaker Grant, the Jerome Foundation in 1982, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Japan-US Friendship Commission in 2010.

Whitney Biennial 1983 at the Whitney Museum of American Art (1983)

The Second Link: Viewpoints on Video in the Eighties at the Walter Philips Gallery, travelled internationally (1983)

In the 1980s, Lucier moved into greater aesthetic and sculptural concerns with her work, reflecting a clear shift in video art sensibilities of the time period. Her 2-channel, 7 monitor installation Ohio at Giverny (1983) both removes the television box from view in its installation as well as provides a translation to video of Claude Monet’s technique of rendering light palpable. Wilderness (1986) furthered Lucier’s experimentation with installation and landscape by placing three channels of video on seven monitors mounted on faux classical pedestals in a stepped colonnade and focusing on American landscape motifs.

10e Biennale de Paris at the Musee d'art moderne de Paris (1977)

Before Projection: Video Sculpture, 1974 – 1995 at MIT/List Visual Arts Center (2018) and at SculptureCenter (2018)

Her movement into video in the early 1970s connected to her interest in the manipulation of the image as well as her fascination with the illuminated television box and its architectural space. In the 1970s, Lucier started to burn the internal recording tube of her camera by focusing on the sun which can be seen in her multi-channel video works Dawn Burn (1975), Paris Dawn Burn (1977) and Equinox (1979). She also performed a piece Fire Writing in 1975 at The Kitchen where she used laser beams to burn text onto the Vidicon tube of her hand-held camera, which can be seen in the resulting video image.

Partially Buried: Land-Based Art in Ohio, 1970 to Now at the Columbus Museum of Art (2021)

The First Generation: Women and Video, 1970–75 by Independent Curators International (1993)

Sonic Arts Union performance at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (1970)

Lucier was invested in performance and photography during her time in the Sonic Arts Union, creating works such as the Polaroid Image Series, which accompanied Alvin Lucier’s work I am sitting in a room (1969). During this performance she projected slides transferred from Polaroids which were degraded in a process similar to Alvin Lucier’s recorded voice.

Videotapes: Early Video Art (1965–1976) at Zachęta National Gallery of Art (2020)

Lucier grew up in Bucyrus, Ohio, before receiving her B.A. from Brandeis University in literature and sculpture. She married the composer Alvin Lucier in 1964 and then toured with him as a member of the Sonic Arts Union from 1966 to the mid1970s. She lived with him in Middletown, Connecticut after he secured a position at Wesleyan University until their divorce in ‘74, when she moved to New York City. She would later marry the painter, Robert Berlind, who passed away in 2015. She currently lives in both New York, NY and Cochecton, New York where she has established a studio and archive for video art.

Into the Light: The Projected Image in American Art, 1964–1977 at the Whitney Museum of American Art (2001–2002)

Primera generacion. Arte e imagén en movimiento (1963–1986) at the Museo Reina Sofia (2006–2007)

Video Skulptur: retrospektiv und aktuell, 1963 – 1989 at the Kölnischer Kunstverein (1989)

Mary Lucier (born 1944, in Bucyrus, Ohio) is an American visual artist and pioneer in video art. Concentrating primarily on video and installation since 1973, she has produced numerous multiple- and single-channel pieces that have had a significant impact on the medium.