Nancy Holt is featured in Sprüth Magers online exhibition Time goes on and remains from March 24 – May 5, 2021, which will also be on view at Art Basel OVR: Pioneers from March 24–27. The exhibition features key works by Holt and Hanne Darboven, with a previously unseen work of seven booklets that Darboven dedicated and sent to Holt in 1973 as its focal point.

One week after the passing of Nancy Holt’s partner Robert Smithson, on July 20, 1973, Hanne Darboven sent Holt a hand-bound artist book composed of seven parts and filled with her characteristic wordless writing lines. Darboven added the cursive dedication: “Dear Nancy, this is my writing to you, you and Bob in my mind - wordless. Nancy, love, Hanne.”

This previously unexhibited work with its heartfelt inscription brings these two groundbreaking artists together nearly half a century later. Little is known about their relationship, other than that they moved in the same artistic circles in New York City in the late 1960s. In distinctive ways Holt and Darboven paid attention to the systems we humans use to attempt to understand the imponderables of time and space. Both worked with language and seriality. Darboven developed her own system of numeric calculations based on calendar systems to represent time from the perspective of lived experience. Holt explored the cycles of cosmological and geological time to draw attention to how we might perceive the changing world around us.

This focused presentation spans large-scale installations, photographic series, and works on paper. Time goes on and remains demonstrates Holt’s and Darboven’s shared interest in revealing the particular qualities of time experienced, time measured and time passing. The title of this presentation is taken from Holt’s own words: “For the time being, in the interim, in the course of time, from day to day, from hour to hour, until, in due time, and in the fullness of time, time endures, goes on, remains, persists, lasts, goes by, elapses, passes, flows, rolls on, flies, slips, slides, and glides by.” Written in May 1978, this short text was first published in a special edition of Arts Magazine dedicated to Robert Smithson.

This is the first exhibition of Nancy Holt's work with Sprüth Magers after announcement of representation by the gallery.

 View the exhibition Time goes on and Remains on the Sprüth Magers website.