GRAZ.- Grazer Kunstverein presents Martin Maloney, the first focused institutional presentation of the work of conceptual artist Martin Maloney (1938–2003). The exhibition will run from September 18 – December 13, 2026.
In New York City in the 1960s, when Conceptual art was taking shape, Maloney was there, standing next to the crib. He had a spot in Seth Siegelaub’s 1966 The 25 Show: Painting and Sculpture, was included in other influential group shows, and exhibited with Gallery Konrad Fischer. For a short while, he shared a studio with Lawrence Weiner on Bleecker Street. He was well-connected, receiving Christmas cards from Sol LeWitt and, according to Maloney’s notebooks, “compliments” from Dan Graham, who once told him: “Maloney, if you stab someone in the back, at least you look them in the eyes.” By most reasonable measures, he had all the necessary ingredients for becoming an art-historical figure, like the rest of them became. Yet soon, more or less, he stopped cooperating. Maloney gradually, actively worked against the networks, institutions, and conventions that were consolidating around Conceptual art.
His practice as such offers an unusually informative case study in the mechanics of art history. Maloney’s absence from our established histories of art raises questions regarding the conditions under which one is able to stay – play nice! We are not returning the artist to the pedestal he apparently declined to stand on. Instead, through his work, we propose to look at the pedestal itself: who builds it, who gets invited onto it, who keeps the records, who writes the books, and what happens when someone refuses, as he so often did. This exhibition brings together some of Maloney’s most compelling works, including language drawings, his Designation Deposits and Reject Object series (1967-2001), artists’ books, performances such as 5 Days and 5 Nights (1971), and forms of exchange that could circulate without necessarily producing the kind of object, career, or reputation that the art world is particularly good at keeping track of.
The exhibition in Graz forms part of a broader international project around Maloney’s practice, with a major new publication about the artist as its central site. From Graz, the project traces the particular geographies that shaped Maloney’s life and reverberated throughout his practice. In 2027, it continues first in New York and later in Antwerp, with M HKA.
Martin Maloney is curated and edited by Yana Foqué and marks the first major exhibition and publication of her programme since her appointment as Artistic Director of Grazer Kunstverein in January 2026.
