At the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Will Brown / MATRIX 259 reactivates and expands on the history of a light installation by renowned minimalist artist Dan Flavin. The 1977–78 piece, untitled (for Gretchen, a colorful and fond match) sets in motion a host of new narratives linked to the transitioning museum and the Bay Area art scene’s ever changing character.
The show consists of several parts: a car full of ephemera which appears to have been abandoned in front of the now-closed Bancroft Way museum entrance; a light installation on the museum’s roof; an artist book on view at UC Berkeley’s Morrison Library; and New Light on Riboflavin, a play written by the poet Kevin Killian and performed on June 12, the night of the opening. I asked David Kasprzak, Jordan Stein and Lindsey White, the collaborators who make up Will Brown, to discuss this exhibition and their practice.
Your projects extend authorship to numerous individuals, many of whom aren’t involved in the initial conception or planning, but end up playing key roles in shaping content.
The question of authorship is something that was part of the Will Brown conversation from day one, or really even before day one. By calling our project Will Brown — creating a sort of fictional entity that could be anyone — the three of us were free to operate under a certain amount of anonymity and, more importantly, as a unified practice.
Our core interest lies in historical narratives, which always involve major and minor characters. In the case of this particular Dan Flavin history, the story of the BAM/PFA light installation wouldn’t exist without Gretchen Glicksman, the museum’s registrar, Barney Bailey, the museum’s chief preparator, and many others. In this way, Will Brown is as interested in people themselves as in the work they do.