Opening one year after Wilson’s passing, DiAlogs reconsiders the sculptural works he conceived for the stage, objects long understood within the context of his theater yet equally recognized as singular contributions to post-war sculpture, architecture and design. Together with the found objects, they reveal the reciprocal relationship between what is discovered and what is created, demonstrating that collecting, arranging, composing and staging were not ancillary activities but central artistic strategies that shaped Wilson’s work as profoundly as drawing, sculpture, architecture and theater itself.
Spanning more than half a century of Wilson’s career, the exhibition assembles works that first fully came to life in the theater. Conceived for the stage and later realized as autonomous sculptures and editions, these objects retain the precision and poetry of their origins while eisting as independent works of art.
Wilson’s life-long engagement with found objects also situates his work within a broader history of modern art. From the Surrealists’ embrace of the objet-trouvé as a catalyst for unexpected associations to Marcel Duchamp’s readymades, the found object has occupied a central place in 20th-century artistic practice. Wilson’s relationship to found materials, however, was fundamentally different—rather than presenting them as isolated conceptual gestures, Wilson gathered vernacular artifacts as elements within an evolving visual language. At the Watermill Center, these objects enter into carefully orchestrated relationships with sculpture, furniture, architecture, landscape and performance, creating spaces in which diverse cultures, histories, materials and forms coexist.
The exhibition was curated by Noah Khoshbin in collaboration with the artist collective Fisher Bradford.
