Anthony McCall was born in 1946 in St. Paul’s Cray, the United Kingdom, and currently lives and works in New York. McCall is known for his cross-disciplinary practice, in which film, sculpture, installation, drawing, and performance overlap. He was a key figure in the avant-garde London Filmmakers Co-operative in the 1970s, and his earliest films are documents of outdoor performances that were notable for their minimal use of the elements, most notably fire. He is known for his “solid-light” installations, a series he began in 1973 with his seminal Line Describing a Cone, in which a volumetric form composed of projected light slowly evolves in three-dimensional space. Viewing becomes an active process of moving around and through the projected object, exploring it from different points of view. To the extent that viewers are incorporated into the forms and thus become part of what is seen, McCall’s light installations also suggest a relationship to performance.
McCall has had recent solo exhibitions at Sprueth Magers Berlin (2013 and 2012), Les Abattoirs, Toulouse, France (2013), the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (2013), Faena Arts Center, Buenos Aires (2013), Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland (2013), Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2012), Adam Art Gallery, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand (2010), Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2009), Utzon Center, Aalborg, Denmark (2007), Serpentine Gallery, London (2007), Musée de Rochechouart, France (2007), IAC Institut d’Art Contemporain, Villeurbanne, France (2006), Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre, University of Warwick, England (2004), and Tate Britain, London (2004). His work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including at Hayward Gallery, London (2013), the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2012), Haus der Kunst, Munich (2012), Tate Liverpool, England (2012), the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC (2008), the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2010), the Singapore Biennale (2008), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2007), Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2006), Kunsthaus Zurich, Switzerland (2006), the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2004 and 2001), Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2004), and the Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna (2003), among many others.
