Eric Orr
| Eric Orr | |
|---|---|
| Born | December 8, 1939 Covington, KY |
| Died | November 13, 1998 (aged 58) Venice Beach, LA |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | Sculpture, Installation, Performance, and Painting |
| Notable work | Zero Mass, Blood Shadow, Prime Matter |
| Movement | Minimal Art, Installation Art, Geometric abstraction, Performance |
| Patron(s) | Peggy Guggenheim, Giuseppe Panza, Stanley & Elyse Grinstein |
Eric Orr (1939–1998) was a sculptor and installation artist. He lived and worked in Venice, California from 1965–1998, and is a key figure of the Light and Space movement. Before moving to Los Angeles in 1965, Orr was a civil rights worker in Mississippi. His artworks are found in the collections of many major cultural institutions, and his work is installed in public and private spaces internationally.
In both his installations, sculpture and paintings, Eric Orr worked with elemental qualities of natural materials, e.g. stone, metal, water, and fire, gold leaf, lead, blood, human skull, and AM/FM radio parts. Orr worked with the "phenomenological exploration of perception." His body of work also includes monochromatic paintings, and large scale fountains (with water & fire). His work was influenced by a religio-philosophical conceptualization of space icons found in ancient religions and cultures, such as Egyptian symbolism and Buddhist Spiritualism. Orr is associated with Light and Space, a group of mostly West Coast artists whose work is primarily concerned with perceptual experience stemming from the viewer's interaction with their work. "The space itself changes you, instead of an object." This group also includes, among others, artists James Turrell, Dewain Valentine, Peter Alexander, Robert Irwin, and Ron Cooper.
"(Orr) always pursued a phenomenological exploration of perception, pushing retinal responses to the limit through ingenious installations or through paintings that blur space via complex relationships of color and gesture...mystical shaman, the alchemical philosopher, whose preoccupations with ritual and the properties of space-time and negative space have led to a body of work that is superficially benign and elegant, sucking the viewer in with Zen-like calm and innocence, yet simultaneously dark and fetishistic."
In 1964, Orr exhibited his first work, Colt 45, a chair set in front of an automatic pistol mounted on a stand at eye level for the seated viewer. "Colt.45...working against the triviality of the exhibited object, it opposed the momentous face of bodily death and was a declaration of war against the viewers' expectation.... It announced Orr's feeling that the overwhelming plethora of art objects amassed, cataloged, and disseminated in our culture had come to imprison the living artist."
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