To confront non-visual subject matter, Robert Barry approaches telepathy, radio waves, invisible gases, and vocabulary as he mines the transitional, impermanent aspects of space in art. Phrases featured in this diffuse, light-emanating composition explore the expressive and redolent properties of language, its unseen role in aggregating an atmosphere. Here, the words and phrases ANYONE ELSE, IMAGINE, DO, HOURS, AGAIN, AND THEN, VERY and NOT WITHOUT are positioned constructively in reddish-rose throughout the pale pink canvas. Functioning as open-ended thoughts, or porous musical notes played by his jazz heroes Miles Davis and Charlie Parker; their linear arrangement also invokes the Minimalist empiricisms, geometrically, of Tony Smith, Ad Reinhardt, and Frank Stella for example.

Born in 1936 in New York, Barry studied Fine Art as an undergraduate at Hunter College of the City University of New York, graduating in 1963. While there, he met and worked under the artists William Baziotes and Robert Motherwell. Barry later earned his Masters of Arts from Hunter College and in 1964, began teaching there. In 1974, Barry moved to Teaneck in New Jersey. He gave up painting, and began making art using invisible media, including electromagnetic energy, ultrasonic radiation, and inert gases. It was around this time when he began incorporating text into his artworks, to seek integration of the viewer with his pieces. His work has been exhibited throughout the United States and internationally, at institutions such as the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Tate Modern in London, the Aspen Art Museum, and the Kunstmuseum in Basel. It’s included, too, in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, among others. Barry continues to live and work in Teaneck.