Trespass 1991
Anastasi picked up a stone from the sidewalk outside, and instead of drawing on the wall, he rubbed and scratched at the surface until some of the paint (and even some of the wall itself) came off.
Description
This work is located in the second room of Allan Wexler’s Bed Sitting Rooms for an Artist in Residence, on the wall between the old fireplace and the window. Anastasi picked up a stone from the sidewalk outside, and instead of drawing on the wall, he rubbed and scratched at the surface until some of the paint (and even some of the wall itself) came off. He calls this kind of drawing a “wall removal.”
Trespass is part of the Mattress Factory’s permanent collection.
William Anastasi is one of the founders of both Conceptual and Minimal Art – relevant works were made before the movements were named. These works, starting in 1961, include Relief and Microphone, among the earliest examples of Conceptual Art. Between 1963 and 1966, we have Sink – a clear demonstration of entropy – and Issue and Trespass – important forerunners to an entire class of works involving deconstruction. Sink (which combines his Conceptual and Minimal approaches) and En Route, are among the earliest forays into Minimal Art. Holding that after Duchamp there was no earthly reason why a blind man could not be an artist, his unsighted drawings were also started in 1963. His 1966/67 Six Sites broke the ground for an entire genre of exhibitions under the rubric Site Specific. Underlying his practice is his sense that the only thing that interests him about taste is that it is always changing.