NEW YORK, NY.- The Dan Flavin Art Institute in Bridgehampton, New York, presents the 2009-2010 season opening April 23rd with the permanent installation of nine fluorescent light works by Dan Flavin, and the special exhibition, Imi Knoebel: Knife Cuts Part 2. The Dan Flavin Art Institute features works created and installed by Flavin especially for thisspace and has been supported and maintained by Dia Art Foundation since 1983. It is located on Corwith Avenue, off Main Street. Summer hours are Thursday through Sunday, 12pm to 6pm, and run through October 18, 2009. Winter hours are Saturday and Sunday, 12pm to 6pm, and run October 24, 2009 through April 11, 2010. Admission is free.

The Dan Flavin Art Institute occupies the former First Baptist Church in Bridgehampton. Originally built as a firehouse in 1908, the building operated as a church from 1924 to the mid-1970s. In 1979, Dia purchased the building to use as a gallery for Flavin. Renovated under his direction with the assistance of Dia’s director of operations James Schaeufele and architect Richard Gluckman, the building retains traces of its former uses: a newel post in the entrance hall is painted red in remembrance of the building’s years as a firehouse, and the original church doors have been moved to the entrance of a small exhibition space on the second floor. This room contains memorabilia, including a neon cross, collected from and about the church.

In 1983, Flavin permanently installed nine works in fluorescent light in the second floor of the space. The pieces span nearly twenty years: the earliest work, red out of a corner (to Annina), dates from 1963 when he decided to work solely with standard fluorescent fixtures and tubes, and the latest piece, untitled (to Robert, Joe and Michael), was made between 1975 and 1981. Flavin conceived of these sculptures and the architecture as a single, unified installation. By manipulating the formal, phenomenal, and referential characteristics of light, the installation asks viewers to consider a series of contrasts—between colors, intensities of light, structure and formlessness, the obvious and the mysterious, and the serious and the humorous.

Imi Knoebel: Knife Cuts Part 2, is the latest in a series of temporary exhibitions at the Dan Flavin Art Institute that has included works by Louise Bourgeois (1989), Andy Warhol (1987 and 1992), Fred Sandback (2004—2006), and John Chamberlain (2007). The show comprises a selection of some 35 of the 80 parts that make up the work Untitled (1977) which consists of collages made from paper cutouts vibrantly colored in oils and acrylics. Untitled (1977) was first shown in 1977 at Heiner Friedrich Galerie in Cologne, and a different selection of its parts was shown last year at Flavin Institute in the exhibition Imi Knoebel: Knife Cuts Part 1, from May 22-December 2008.

Dan Flavin
Dan Flavin was born in 1933 in New York City, where he later studied art history at the New School for Social Research (1956) and Columbia University (1957—59). His first solo show was at the Judson Gallery, New York, in 1961. Flavin made his first work with electric light that same year, and he began using commercial fluorescent bulbs in 1963. Major exhibitions of Flavin's work include those at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1967), the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (1969), the Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden-Baden (1989), and the internationally-touring retrospective organized by Dia in association with the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., that commenced in 2004. In 1983, Dia opened the Dan Flavin Art Institute in Bridgehampton, New York, and in 1992 Flavin created a monumental installation for the reopening of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. He died in 1996, leaving designs for a light installation for Milan's Chiesa Rossa that was realized posthumously with Dia's support.

Imi Knoebel
Imi Knoebel was born in Dessau, Germany, in 1940. He was a student of Joseph Beuys at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 1964 to 1971. His first exhibition, "IMI + IMI," with Imi Giese, a fellow student of Beuys, was held in Copenhagen, in 1968. Knoebel has since exhibited his works in Documentas 5 (1972), 6 (1977), 7 (1982), and 8 (1987), and at Sonsbeek '71. In 1987 Knoebel oversaw an installation of his own work, as well as that of Beuys and Blinky Palermo, for the inaugural exhibitions at Dia's galleries on West 22nd Street in New York City. A retrospective of his work traveled, in 1996—97, throughout Europe, including such venues as Haus der Kunst, Munich; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and Institut Valencià d'Art Modern, Centre Julio González, Valencia. He will have a major retrospective in summer 2009 at the Hamburger Bahnhof and the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. His monumental cycle, 24 Colors—for Blinky (1977) is currently on view at Dia:Beacon. He lives and works in Düsseldorf.