UC Riverside

This project examines Lynda Benglis’ 1971 series of poured polyurethane installations produced on-site at various museums and galleries in the United States. While Benglis’ career has often been examined in light of her involvement in feminist art practices and post-minimal sculpture, the purpose of this project is to offer an expanded consideration of the six installations as a distinct series apart from her other work. Using rarely-seen video and photographic documentation, museum exhibition records, and critical reviews, I parse the intersections among materiality, site, and process. Despite Benglis’ assertion that she was not directly involved with Process Art, my project nevertheless revisits this crucial moment in which sculpture was produced as a byproduct of an ephemeral action rather than as a permanent form.

The first chapter examines the role of documentation in framing the installations. I argue that, while on one hand, documentation flattens, obscures, or otherwise fixes in place the ephemeral objects, it also may offer a way to understand the agency of the material itself. The second chapter turns to another type of frame, which is the site in which they are produced. While many critics observed that the cantilevered pours evoke some kind of environment, I expand on the implications of the term. By situating the cantilevered pours into this significant discourse on photography and site, my project ultimately addresses the seeming disparity between sculptural permanence and ephemeral event in postwar art.