ARTFEED — Contemporary Art Intelligence

Mary Lucier's Video Installations at the Kitchen Explore Memory and Collaboration

exhibition · 2026-04-22

From January 7 to February 27, 2016, Mary Lucier showcased her video installations at the Kitchen in New York City. This exhibition, which honored her late collaborator, composer Robert Ashley, who passed away in 2014, utilized editing techniques to blend historical and contemporary elements. One notable work, Color Phantoms with Automatic Writing, drew inspiration from Ashley's production Quicksand. The upstairs area recreated a psychoanalyst's waiting room, complete with memorabilia like an oriental rug that belonged to Dorothea Tanning, while a monitor played Color Phantoms, featuring Ashley's involuntary speech alongside a woman's French translation. Downstairs, Trial revisited footage from 1974 of Ashley performing with Merce Cunningham. This event coincided with the Kitchen's forty-fifth anniversary and the exhibition From Minimalism into Algorithm.

Key facts

  • Mary Lucier's exhibition ran from January 7 to February 27, 2016
  • The Kitchen was located at 512 West 19th Street in New York City
  • Color Phantoms with Automatic Writing commemorated composer Robert Ashley
  • Ashley died in 2014 and had a mild form of Tourette's Syndrome
  • The upstairs installation recreated a psychoanalyst's waiting room with Freudian furnishings
  • An oriental rug in the installation once belonged to Dorothea Tanning
  • Trial featured 1974 footage of Ashley with Merce Cunningham and his dancers
  • The Kitchen celebrated its forty-fifth anniversary with this exhibition

Entities

Artists

  • Mary Lucier
  • Robert Ashley
  • Steve Paxton
  • Dorothea Tanning
  • Max Ernst
  • Merce Cunningham
  • Donald Judd
  • Lucinda Childs
  • Agnieszka Kurant
  • Paul Sietsema
  • Anne Opie Wehrer
  • Sigmund Freud
  • Philip Glass

Institutions

  • The Kitchen
  • artcritical

Locations

  • New York City
  • United States

Sources