Holt's "Locators with Loci" on view in "Minimal" at the Bourse de Commerce
Nancy Holt’s 1972 sculpture Locators with Loci is on view in the exhibition Minimal at the Bourse de Commerce, Paris, through January 18, 2026. Curated by Jessica Morgan, Director of Dia Art Foundation, the exhibition traces the scope of Minimal Art through more than one hundred works by forty international artists, many drawn from the Pinault Collection.
Locators with Loci belongs to a series of sculptures Holt began in 1971, when she created her first three-dimensional works—what she called “seeing devices”—that draw attention to visual perception and place. The Locators consist of industrial piping welded into a T-shape and are designed to be viewed through with one eye, directing attention to the time-bound processes of vision. Developed directly from Holt’s experiments with photography, the Locators provide a means of locating perception itself.
The four Locators Holt uses in Locators with Loci shift in angle and distance from the wall. Each is aligned with a painted black Loci, which progresses from a perfect circle to an elongated ellipse. Although the wall-mounted shapes differ from one another, when viewed through each Locator they appear as a perfect black circle edged by a ring of light—an experience akin to seeing a full moon on a clear night or witnessing an eclipse.
Nancy Holt, Locators with Loci (1972)
Installation view: Minimal, Bourse de Commerce—Pinault Collection, Paris, France, 2025
Four steel pipes, black paint
Overall dimensions variable; Locators 60 x 12 x 2 in. (152 x 31 x 5 cm) each
Photograph: Nicolas Brasseur/Pinault Collection
© Holt/Smithson Foundation / Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York
