In the latest edition of our ongoing series, One Wall, One Work, Robert Barry has created a new etched mirror diptych – black glass mirror - a 30 inch square juxtaposed with a 30 inch circle, each with text that varies in orientation. Each panel consists of complete words, incomplete words (as they would extend over the edges of the mirror), specific words (e.g. “desire”) and open-ended words (e.g. “almost”). Partly a formal study in comparison (square versus circle, reflective (background) versus opaque (etched text), specific versus general, this work also provides the space among these relationships so as to create a grey space where answers and meanings are not hard, fast or fully defined, but where one can question strict logic and allow for poetic feeling, meaning and opportunity.

In terms of the artist's history, Robert Barry’s first solo museum exhibition was in 1971 at The Tate in London and over the years he has proceeded to have solo exhibitions at the Stedelijk in Amsterdam, the Folkwangmuseum Essen in Germany, the former Museum of Conceptual Art in San Francisco, the Musée St. Pierre, Art Contemporain in Lyon, France, the Haags Gemeentemuseum in Den Haag, Netherlands, the Dum Umeni Brno in the Czech Republic, and the Kunsthalle Nurnberg among others. Group exhibitions with Barry's work have taken place at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, Seattle Art Museum, Jewish Museum, Kyoto Museum of Fine Arts, Museum of Modern Art in New York, among hundreds of others.

His works are in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Panza Collection, Varese, Ludwig Collection, Cologne, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C., Musee National d’Art Moderne, Centre George Pompidou, Paris, Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Museum für Monderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt, Germany, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Los Angeles, and the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, among many others.