Biography

Hap Tivey is an American installation artist based in New York. He was a key member of the first generation of artists in America in the 60s and 70s whose work contributed to the coining of the term ‘installation art’, having lived as a Zen monk in Japan for a number of years that gave additional foundation to his experimentation with light as a form approaching ideas of emptiness.

Hap Tivey began creating light installations and sculptures during the late sixties in Los Angeles. For more than thirty years, Tivey’s art has investigated the phenomena of light. In installation, painting, sculpture and projection, he pursued the concrete experience of light as well as the emotional and theoretical implications it holds for the human condition. This last body of work distills many of the techniques and subtleties he discovered during those three decades into simple powerful statements of pure light. Hap Tivey has an extensive exhibition history across the USA and abroad. His works are also held in such public collections as the Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R Guggenheim, New York.