During the 1950s and 60s, Kuehn worked as a roofer and iron worker on large scale construction sites. Kuehn's experience as a construction worker was formative in the development of his work, and shaped his relationship to the physicality of raw materials.[9] Kuehn states, "I once witnessed an accident on a construction site where concrete spilled when we were building a foundation. The wood structure broke and concrete poured and poured out of the sides and bottom. I thought it was amazing. I was struck by how this geometric structure collapsed and the concrete spilled out over the landscape. I posit geometry as the expression of the ideal, the pinnacle of rational thinking, and a source of authority..."[10]
Kuehn's work was included in the groundbreaking exhibition Eccentric Abstraction curated by Lucy Lippard in 1966 at the Fischbach Gallery in New York. Considered the first Postminimal art exhibition, Eccentric Abstraction brought together artists including Eva Hesse, Keith Sonnier, and Bruce Nauman who were subverting the rigid hard-edge Minimalism that was dominant at the time.[11][12]
In 1967 after seeing Kuehn's work at an exhibition at Bianchini Gallery in New York, Kuehn was invited to Kassel, Germany by the art dealer Rolf Ricke to create new work for Kuehn's first European solo exhibition, "Gary Kuehn: Zeichnungen und Mini-Objekte."[13] This began a lifelong friendship and working relationship with Ricke and prompted Kuehn to live in Germany for several periods throughout the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. In 1977 Kuehn exhibited in Documenta 6, Kassel and in 1980 he was awarded the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) Fellowship in Berlin.[8]
His work is known for its fluid use of materials that undermined the psychology of dominant Minimal Art practices.[16] Using a straightforward and reduced formal language, Kuehn subverts pure geometric forms with content-driven, metaphorical concepts. David Komary states, "The works seem like excerpts of a process, sequence, or chain of events that enacted through or by means of the given sculptural object. Kuehn's focus is a concept of art that enables him to explore questions of geometry and form while also reflecting on and sculpturally negotiating aspects of expression, human experience, and self-perception. His aesthetic approach is based on a certain idea about rationality- not in a formal or compositional sense but in a manner analogous to human and interpersonal experiences - which he understands as the relationship of objects to one another and their potential means of expression or attitudes."[17]
Although Kuehn works with a wide range of materials, the unifying theme throughout his discursive practices is a tension between forms as evident in his Black Paintings and Melt Pieces.[18] In 1992 when he received the Francis J. Greenburger Foundation Award, George Segal wrote about the “rule-breaking” in Kuehn's work and said, “Artists [like Kuehn] who don’t fit comfortably into art historical categories have a terrible time.”[19] Kuehn's refusal to produce trademarked work explains why he was "unfairly sidelined by history" according to art historians such as Thomas Crow.[20]
Public collections
Albertina, Vienna, Austria
Bonn Städtisches Kunst Museum, Bonn, Germany
Bristol-Meyers Squibb Corporation
Continental Corporation, New York, New York and Cranbury, New Jersey
^Zwirner, Dorothea (2013). Gary Kuehn: Five Decades. Germany: Hatje Cantz. p. 11. ISBN9783775736459. Kuehn's mother, Adelaide Ruddiman, ran the household while his father George, was a machinist and communist. George's membership in the Communist Party during the McCarthy era led to numerous problems and hostilities which could only have been experienced by the children as menacing. Differently than for many of his schoolmates, Kuen's affiliation as a student with the left-wing milieu signified less the adoption of an intellectual or oppositional stance than an ambivalent socialization, one that led to his critical confrontation with dialectical materialism.
^Hinant, Cindy (2016). "Gary Kuehn: The Art of Opposing Forces". Provincetown Arts: 66–67.
^Lippard, Lucy (November 1966). "Eccentric Abstraction". Art International. X-9: 37. Rutgers University, where Sonnier and Kuehn have taught, is a hotbed of eccentroc abstraction, a phenomenon due mainly to the individual developments of the artists, but perhaps indirectly attributable to Allan Kaprow's unrestricted ideas and his history of involvement with bizarre and impermanent materials, which was influential there even after his own departure.
^Fumagalli, Sara (2018). The Unmoved Mover: A Conversation between Gary Kuehn and Sara Fumagali. Italy: Mousse. p. 42. ISBN9788867493494. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
^Zwirner, Dorothea (2013) Gary Kuehn: Five Decades, Germany: Hatje Cantz p. 11 ISBN377573645X
^Komary, David (2018). Processual Being, Object-Like Becoming. Notes on the Semantics of Arrested Temporality in the works of Gary Kuehn. Mousse. p. 35. ISBN978-88-6749-349-4. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
^Hinant, Cindy. 2014 "A Subverisve Practitioner." Gary Kuhen: Between Sex and Geometry. Kunstmusuem Liechtenstein. Ed. Christiane Meyer-Stoll. Cologne: Snoeck Verlagsgessellschaft, 2014. 32-36. Print ISBN3864421098
^Francis J. Greenburger Foundation. (1992) The Francis J. Greenburger Foundation Awards United States: Francis J. Greenburger Foundation p. 16