September 16 through November 11, 2001

The University of California, Berkeley Art Museum is proud to present Ceal Floyer in her first solo museum exhibition in North America. Ceal Floyer/MATRIX 192 37'4", opens at the museum on Sunday, September 16.

Floyer's work has been described as "good old-fashioned Conceptual Art with a late-'90s attitude." She applies classic Conceptual strategies – use of a limited, predetermined set of ideas to create a work of art – to everyday objects and scenarios. The result are typically simple, deceptively uncomplicated installations that appear almost to make fun of Conceptual art itself. In the process Floyer involves the viewer, whose experience of the artwork is what ultimately defines it as art.

An example is Bucket (1999), an ordinary bucket seemingly set on the floor to catch a drip of water that viewers hear as they enter the gallery. There is no water in the bucket, however, only CD player with an audio track of water dripping into an empty container. Floyer makes no attempt to disguise the mechanisms or devices that make her installations "work." In Door (1995), the crack of light visible under a closed door turns out to come not from the room beyond, but from a slide projector set in the middle of the floor. In these works Floyer uses familiar objects and situations, creating expectations that she then confounds.

In a similar manner Floyer's site-specific MATRIX exhibition explores a relationship between language and perception. The installation comprises a wall drawing made from a single piece of black underwear elastic stretched the entire length of the gallery. Floyer plays upon contrasts contained within the work – its minimal and maximal qualities, its two- and three-dimensional qualities, and the ways in which viewers base assumptions and expectations of a work of art upon its title.

Public Programs
Artists' Talk
Sunday, September 16, 3:00 p.m.
Ceal Floyer and L.A.-based artist Jessica Bronson will discuss their respective MATRIX exhibitions which are showing concurrently at the BAM/PFA. Floyer will talk about the conceptual framework of her site-specific installation and how it relates to issues in her past work.

Gallery Talk
Thursday, October 25, 12:15 p.m.
In her curatorial walkthrough of Ceal Floyer and Jessica Bronson's MATRIX installations, Phyllis Wattis MATRIX Curator Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson will explore the artists' relation to their respective influences and creative context.