Sol Lewitt's On the Walls of the Lower East Side at Mondrian Soho

Morgans Hotel Group and Paula Cooper Gallery collaborated for an installation of photographs by Sol Lewitt beginning November 16, 2011. The installation consists of 120 photographs of New York's Lower East Side taken by Lewitt in 1979.

On the Walls of the Lower East Side consists of 666 photographs in total, depicting the decayed landscape of the neighborhood in lower Manhattan where LeWitt then had his home and studio. (The door of his loft at 117 Hester Street is included.) Graffiti covered
walls were abundant in the area, and LeWitt shoots mostly images of political scrawls, torn posters and splattered paint in a straight-forward, almost deadpan, style that is in essence social documentary.

Sol Lewitt believed that walls were public and large and that books were small and private; that they each provide the same information through extremely different formats.

Sol Lewitt wrote "When one sees a wall, it is the impact of the whole that is understood at once-emotionally more than intellectually. It is only by reading the wall that the viewer understands it fully."

The installation of LeWitt's On the Walls of the Lower East Side
at Mondrian SoHo provides an opportunity for this work to be seen in the context of the community that inspired it.

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• sol lewitt
• mondrian soho
• paula cooper gallery
• lewitt foundation
• new york city
• morgans hotel group