Terry Fox was one of the leading pioneers of American Body Art and Conceptual art.
Terry Fox (b. 1943 Seattle – d. 2008 Cologne) was one of the leading pioneers of American Body Art and Conceptual art. He became famous in the Seventies with performances in which he used his own body as a medium for exploring often extreme physical and psychological experiences. In numerous installations, actions and street events he directed a heightened attention to everyday phenomena and aspects of social interactions. Fox researched both unknown and little regarded aspects of energy in substances, and the transformative qualities of materials. And from the 1980s on, language, as both substance and meaning, would play an increasingly important role in his space related works and objects.
With his lifelong, innovative exploration of sound and space, Terry Fox is also one of the seminal figures in contemporary Sound Art. He became known worldwide in the 1970s for performances with meters-long piano wires stretched in rooms, often fastened from one wall to an opposite wall. With his understanding of sound as a sculptural material, he has created an impressive body of work located between Visual art and Acoustic Sound art. In his later years quiet sounds at the limit of audibility and silence became more and more prominent.
The ephemeral, the invisible, time, space, the body, words, letters, sound -throughout his entire work Terry Fox used the elemental forms of human existence to explore the possibilities of sculpture and extend its limits.