Robert Barry released prepackaged liters of noble gasses into the atmosphere in several locations in Southern California, including Beverly Hills and the Mojave Desert. He was invited to participate in a one month exhibition, which had a printed poster stating: ROBERT BARRY/INERT GAS SERIES/HELIUM, NEON, ARGON, KRYPTON, XENON/FROM A MEASURED VOLUME TO INDEFINITE EXPANSION/APRIL 1969. Only later did he provide photographs as documentation.
Most would believe that releasing the gasses that were so painstakingly and financially costing to contract from the environment would be a strange and fruitless endeavor, especially since the actual performance was invisible to the viewer the first time it was shown. However, Barry had the conceptual drive to produce art that wasn’t aesthetic, existed outside traditional methods and mediums, and which without documentation would be completely invisible to the eye.
Another important point in the piece is that the gasses would have been used commercially if the artist had not retrieved them and returned them to their original environment. He recorded the life cycle of these gasses, something that happens constantly but nobody can see.
“[Noble gasses] were completely unknown about one hundred years ago, we didn’t know they existed, and yet we breathe them in and exhale them; we live around them and move in these inert gases”
In this way, it was only natural that the piece would exist outside the institution–not in a gallery or a museum, not presented where everyone would pay attention to it. This way the viewer would conceptualize it in their mind, aware of the processes at work around them.
Contributed by
Steven Connor