Simon Fraser University
Engaging the World

Robert Morris: The Birthday Boy

March 29 – May 3, 2008
SFU Gallery

The Birthday Boy was originally created in 2004 for the Accademia Gallery in Florence, on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of Michelangelo's David. The piece was subsequently shown in Paris in the spring of 2007, as part of the Louvre's Counterpoint series. The Birthday Boy is a dual-screen projection showing two simultaneous, 35-minute lectures on David, given by two “art historians”—one male and one female. As the art historians are speaking, the sculpture undergoes a metamorphosis that is seemingly in response to the critical commentary aimed at the work. Morris's video examines in detail, and with no small amount of humour, the complex relation that exists between the work of art and the commentary applied to it, whether scholarly or merely opinionated. The Birthday Boy is in Italian with English subtitles.

Robert Morris is one of the most important artists of the second half of the twentieth century. Known primarily for his minimalist sculpture, Morris has expanded his practice into other areas over the past decades. His influential writings on the nature and processes of art have been collected in the book Continuous Project Altered Daily (1993) and Duke University Press has just published Have I Reasons: Work and Writings 1993-2007. Robert Morris was born in Kansas City in 1931 and currently divides his time between teaching at Hunter College in New York City and continuing to make art in his studio in upstate New York.

Curated by Bill Jeffries.

Events

Opening Reception
Saturday, March 29, 2008, 3–5pm