Robert Barry (artist)

Infobox Artist
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name = Robert Barry


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birthdate = March 9, 1936
location = New York, New York
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nationality = American
field = Conceptual art, Idea art
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In 1968, Robert Barry is quoted as saying "Nothing seems to me the most potent thing in the world." [Lucy R. Lippard, Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972 (New York, Praeger, 1973), p. 40 ] Barry's work focuses on escaping the previously known physical limits of the art object in order to express the unknown or unperceived. [Goldstein and Rorimer, Museum of Conceptual Art catalog, Reconsidering the Object of Art: 1965 to 1975, ISBN 0-262-57111-0] Consequently, Barry has explored a number of different avenues toward defining the usually unseen space around objects, rather than producing the objects themselves.

Major nonvisible works from his early period include Carrier Wave, in which Barry used the carrier waves of a radio station for a prescribed length of time "not as a means of transmitting information, but rather as an object." [ Kristine Stiles, Peter Howard Selz, Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art (University of California Press, 1996), p. 839, ISBN 0520202511] , Radiation Piece, and Inert Gas Piece, in which Barry opened various bottles inert gases in different settings before groups of spectators, such as a vial of helium released in a desert. [http://www.frieze.com/issue/review/robert_barry/]

When asked about his piece for exhibition "Prospect '69," his response was "The piece consists of the ideas that people will have from reading this interview... The piece in its entirety is unknowable because it exists in the mind of so many people. Each person can really know that part which is in his own mind."Fact|date=July 2008

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