until Sunday September 07 2014

MoMA - The Museum of Modern Art
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United States

The Department of Media and Performance Art, in collaboration with MoMA PS1, is pleased to present several of James Lee Byars's most influential performance works. Byars (Detroit, 1932–Cairo, 1997), one of the most mythic artistic figures of the last century, shaped his persona and career into a continuous performance.

Transfixed by the idea of perfection, Byars produced a remarkable body of work—including sculptures, fabric costumes, "performable" paper pieces, film, ink paintings, correspondence, ephemera, and live performances—that strove to give form to his search for beauty and truth. Pursuing what he called "the first totally interrogative philosophy," he attempted to delineate the limits of our knowledge while enacting a desire for something more.