Founded by Lawrence Kumpf in 2016 as a platform for the preservation and presentation of experimental and time-based performance art,
Blank Forms focuses on art and music that resist commodification. Through commissions, exhibitions, publication, and archival and estate projects, Kumpf aims to support future scholarship and create a more robust discourse for underrepresented practices.
Catherine Christer Hennix: Toposes and Adjoints, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, September 4–October 17, 1976. Courtesy Blank Forms. Photo: Rita Knox
With the Catherine Christer Hennix Legacy Research & Development project, Kumpf aims to deepen understanding of Hennix’s (b.1948 Stockholm; d.2023, Istanbul) life, work, milieu, and influence. Her body of work spans sculpture, light art, minimal music, computer programming, mathematics, philosophy and poetry. The research will not only bring new insights into Hennix’s complex practice, but will also expand the conversation around New York’s downtown experimental performance scene, of which she was a key interlocutor.
Catherine Christer Hennix performing at 99 Scott, New York, July 14, 2022. Courtesy Blank Forms. Photo: Marissa Alper
Over the last decade, Kumpf worked closely with the artist to produce concerts and organize exhibitions, publish her written and recorded work, and, since her passing in 2023, has begun building her archive. The materials include artwork, exhibition catalogs, program notes, poetry, essays, mathematics manuscripts, notebooks, correspondence, 500 reel-to-reel tapes, other recorded material, assorted press, and musical equipment.
Catherine Christer Hennix rehearsing at Blank Forms, New York, July 2022. Courtesy Blank Forms. Photo: Ari Marcopoulos
Lawrence Kumpf is Artistic and Executive Director of Blank Forms, which he founded in 2016 to preserve and present cross-disciplinary art. Since its inception, the organization has presented more than 250 events and exhibitions and published over seventy books, alongside ongoing work developing artist archives and estates. Kumpf co-curated Open Plan: Cecil Taylor (2016) at the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York) and has organized major projects with artists including Catherine Christer Hennix, Don and Moki Cherry, Jerry Hunt, and Candace Hill-Montgomery. His curatorial work has been presented internationally in collaboration with the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), Argos (Brussels), Bourse de Commerce (Paris), and the Munch Museum (Oslo), as well as in New York at MoMA PS1 and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. He co-directs the estate of Catherine Christer Hennix and the Maryanne Amacher Foundation. From 2008 to 2016, he served as Artistic Director and Curator at ISSUE Project Room (New York).