Hans Haacke 1967

When invited to do a solo exhibition at MIT in 1967, Hans Haacke was known as a “kinetic” artist—yet he made it clear upon arriving that his works were now to be called “systems,” produced with the “explicit intention of having their components physically communicate with each other, and the whole communicate physically with the environment,” according to the artist’s statements in 1967. These early works involved provoking and staging time-based events: wind in water vs. water in wind; the cycles of feedback systems of organic life; the dynamism of water in its solid state—freezing, evaporating, and melting; and the production of artificial climates. The exhibition Hans Haacke 1967 brought together from Haacke’s solo 1967 exhibition together again for the first time in fourty-four years. The exhibition was organized for MIT’s List Visual Arts Center by Caroline A. Jones, professor in the History,Theory, and Criticism Program at MIT. This catalogue publication features an essay by Jones, writings by Haacke, and the first English publication of a text written by art historian and curator Edward F. Fry. Fry’s text served as the introduction to the catalogue accompanying his cancelled survey of Haacke’s work which was planned for the Solomon R. Guggenhiem Museum in New York in 1971.