HORIZONS (2024)

HORIZONS is a conceptual art project by Garry Neill Kennedy (1935–2021) in which a selection of landscape paintings are rehung so that the horizon lines are at the eye level of the artist, and—when viewed together—these otherwise disparate landscapes form one continuous horizon line around the gallery walls.

Kennedy conceived of this project when he was invited to participate in the group exhibition Pluralities on the occasion of the centenary of the National Gallery of Canada in 1980. His proposal to rehang historical paintings illustrates one of the questions that has been central to institutional critique—what does it look like when the conventions of a museum or gallery are challenged by an artist? With paintings shifted from their conventional positions, Kennedy re-imagines gallery norms and practices.

Kennedy had been thinking broadly about the medium of painting since the mid-1970s. These investigations took the form of paintings in which the artist followed a series of predetermined, systematic steps to create a work, as well as site-specific projects that considered the gallery as a framework for his conceptual interventions.