Robert Irwin: All the Rules Will Change

April 7, 2016 – September 5, 2016 - The first museum exhibition to focus exclusively on Irwin’s extraordinary trajectory between 1958 and 1970 charts the artist’s remarkable course from the early small abstractions and larger “pick-up stick” paintings, through the line paintings and dot paintings, into the aluminum and acrylic discs, the acrylic columns, and, finally, to ephemeral installations that responded to the specific circumstances of a given site. By bringing together multiple examples of each painting series alongside later sculptural artworks, including key works from the Hirshhorn’s collection, this exhibition offers a rare opportunity to reconsider Irwin’s process of meticulously working through aesthetic and phenomenological issues, which culminated in the artist abandoning both the medium of painting and a traditional studio practice.