Robert Kinmont, Robert Kinmont, 2013

Although the Californian conceptual artist Robert Kinmont’s work dates back to the late 1960s and the beginning of 1970s, this is the first monograph ever. Kinmont is primarily concerned with his environment, the Californian landscape. He works with simple, mostly natural materials, and places them in relation to his body and his life. Probably his best known work, entitled 8 Natural Handstands (1969/2005), a series of photographs showing the artist doing handstands in abandoned landscapes, on the edges of cliffs, river beds, forests and deserts, was illustrated in Lucy Lippard’s famous book Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972. Not so long afterwards, Kinmont retreated from art practice for the following three decades. Recent solo exhibitions in Glarus and Bremen have been the occasion for a long overdue publication. Kinmont is back.