Not Just Another Pretty Face 

Stan VanDerBeek: Panels for the Walls of the World: Phase I, 1970

Hyde Park Art Center > Exhibitions > Stan VanDerBeek: Panels for the Walls of the World: Phase I, 1970

The hundreds of collages made by VanDerBeek over fifty years ago on 8.5 x 14 inch pieces of paper to make “Panels for the Walls of the World” used daily newspaper headlines regarding persistent, interrelated worldwide issues of racism, war, poverty, and divisive politicians alongside advertisements featuring images of perfected bodies, commodities and abundant food. 

This presentation is part of a multi-site project that marks the first time Stan VanDerBeek’s fax murals will be transmitted to multiple sites simultaneously since VanDerBeek’s realization of the artwork in 1970.  Phase I of “Panels for the Walls of the World” will be transmitted by the Stan VanDerBeek Archive in Brooklyn, NY and installed in stages at EXPO Chicago, DOCUMENT and Hyde Park Art Center. Phase 2 of the mural will be the focus of an exhibition at the Box in Los Angeles in September 2022. Original components from Stan VanDerBeek’s fax murals made 1968-1971 are publicly displayed at DOCUMENT through April 23rd as part of their exhibition Panels for the Walls of the World, Phase I.

The installation at Hyde Park Art Center will be activated by artists who are currently taking the Sequences, Iterations, and Permutations (SIP) course led by Jasper Goodrich. Instead of making individual artworks, artists in this class make collections of artworks that tell stories, depict emotions, or communicate ideas. SIP started as an online class in May of 2020, and offered a platform for artists to share work and ideas with each other digitally during a time of heightened isolation due to the Covid 19 pandemic. Thus, this installation will put VanDerBeek’s “Panels for the Walls of the World” in dialogue with artists who continue to propose new ways to make art with others with help of new technologies today.

  • March 19 – June 7, 2022
  • Pond Community Space

“The mural is a form of “process art.” Much of the “art” is in the act of doing it for both the artist and the viewer. In this case my ambition for the mural is to go through three phases, and in theory the work would never be finished. It will originate in my studio at the Center for Visual Studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass. It will be transmitted on standard telephone by the use of a Xerox device called a “Telecopier” to a receiving unit with a similar device at the First National Bank of Minneapolis. The mural will measure 6’5”x9’3” and will consist of mosaic-like units (8 1/2” x 14”) to be transmitted to Minneapolis throughout the show. An operator will take them out of the machine after a 10 min. transmission and place them on the wall. This process will continue for 10 days, so that the mural will “grow” and be in “process” as it is exhibited.”

 

-Stan VanDerBeek, 1970