A pioneer of conceptual art, Terry Fox is known for his body, performance, and auditory works. Active in both New York and San Francisco during the 1960s and 70s, Fox’s early work used his own body as the object of performance. He later incorporated recorded audio into his projects, including his celebrated symphonies incorporating a cat’s purr. During the mid-1980s, Fox turned to creating objects rather than strictly focusing on performance.
Fascinated with the interaction between language, objects, and time, Fox developed a confounding object during his 1992 residency. Created as an edition of 16 umbrellas, Locus Solus (meaning “the solitary place”) features a silkscreened sundial strip sewn to its underside, awaiting activation from a sunbeam.
The work shares its title with Raymond Roussel’s 1914 novel where a wealthy inventor invites friends and colleagues on a tour of his estate. Each object is more bizarre than the last and none of the inventions serve a practical purpose. What might the inventor’s guests make of a sundial attached to an object that is not only mobile but meant for a rainy day?
