2002 - 2004

John Chamberlain, John Chamberlain & Rodin, 2002, Ektacolor Professional Print taken with WideLux Camera

2002

Chamberlain travels to Paris with his family and stays at the late John and Dominique de Menil's apartment. He works on maquettes for new projects during this time.

He returns to Shelter Island and starts working on large-format photographs printed on canvas.

April: "John Chamberlain: Baby Tycoons" is exhibited at Buchmann Skulpturenprojekte & Kunsthandel in Agra, Switzerland. The exhibit includes works like "Caccia Later," "Cold Cuts," "Constant Extra," "Drop of Only," "Hapless Blanco," and "Tropical Impulse," all from 2001.

April 16: Chamberlain celebrates his seventy-fifth birthday at the American Hotel in Sag Harbor, New York. The event menu features items named after titles of Chamberlain's sculptures.

April 26-July 31: "John Chamberlain: Sculpture and Photographs" is displayed at Galerie Karsten Greve in Cologne.

June-September 15: "The Hedge" (1997) is installed at 60 Wall Street, New York, as part of Art Downtown, an effort to revitalize the area following the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

Chamberlain conceives a memorial project, "Forest of Memory," as an unrealized idea. It involves a cubic-acre atrium atop a fifty-story building, filled with totem-like aluminum sculptures honoring the victims. He describes it as a "lighthouse" with a roof in the shape of a God's eye.

September 19-October 12: "John Chamberlain: Sculpture 1988-2001" is exhibited at Waddington Galleries in London.

September 28 and 29: "The Secret Life of Hernando Cortez" (1968) screens at Anthology Film Archives in New York.

October 28, 2002-January 13, 2003: Chamberlain participates in the exhibition "Black Mountain College: Una aventura americana" at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid.

John Chamberlain, Andrea and Marc Glimcher Wedding, 2003

2003

Chamberlain undergoes back surgery.

January 16-March 1: The exhibition "John Chamberlain: Recent Sculpture" takes place at PaceWildenstein, 534 West Twenty Fifth Street, New York. The exhibit features nine sculptures created between 2000 and 2002, including notable works such as "Chicotimi Falls," "Kickapoo Falls" (over 11 feet tall), and "Potawatami Falls" (all 2002), most of which incorporate stainless steel.

April 12-July 27: "American Icon: The Art of John Chamberlain" is exhibited at Guild Hall in East Hampton, New York. The show includes seven sculptures made between 1986 and 2003, such as "Remnant Gardens" (1986), "Verb Goddess" (1988-90), "Cautious Maniac" (2001), "Virgin Concert" (2001), and "Hobson's Voice" (2002). Chamberlain gives a public talk during the exhibition.

May 18: Dia: Beacon opens to the public, displaying long-term works by individual artists, including Chamberlain. The Dia Art Foundation's converted Nabisco box-printing factory in upstate New York serves as the venue.

October 25-November 30: The exhibition "Dan Flavin and John Chamberlain: Sculpture" is held at Gagosian Gallery, 980 Madison Avenue, New York. Chamberlain's works "Apparentlyoffspring," "Anteambulo Quincunx," and "A Spear de Corps" (all 1992) are displayed alongside Dan Flavin's "Untitled (to Hans Coper, master potter)" (1990).

October 28-December 20: "John Chamberlain: Early Works" is exhibited at Allan Stone Gallery in New York. The gallery showcases nearly three dozen works from Chamberlain's early career, including works on paper from the late 1950s, acoustic-ceiling-tile collages from 1960-63, and sculptures like "Ballantine" (1957), "Cord" (1957), "Projectile D.S.N.Y." (1957), "Hatband" (1960), "Hudson" (1960), and "Nutcracker" (1960).

December 6, 2003-February 14, 2004: "John Chamberlain: Recent Sculpture" is exhibited at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, Nebraska. The exhibit features six sculptures created between 2002 and 2003, including "Phonetic Shortcut" (2002).

John Chamberlain, BORDERTOWN 135, 2004

2004

February 19-23: PaceWildenstein presents John Chamberlain in Miniature at the ADAA Art Show, New York, featuring twenty-two small metal sculptures from a series entitled Bordertowns (2002-03), made by the artist around the time of his back surgery.

March 14-August 2: Participates in A Minimal Future? Art as Object 1958-1968,+ Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (three lacquer paintings and two galvanized sculptures).

September: Produces three sculpture editions with Gemini G.E.L.: Straits of Muse (edition of 9, published 2005), Amusing Straits (edition of 6, published 2006), and Amusing Muse (edition of 9, published 2007). The forms, foam blocks carved to resemble portions of tree trunks, are cast in bronze and chrome-plated.

September 1-December 1: The Hedge (1997) is installed at Lever House, New York, joining its collection.

October 6: Lever House owners Aby Rosen and Alberto Mugrabi, along with PaceWildenstein president Marc Glimcher, host an evening celebration, with cocktails at Lever House and dinner on Seagram Plaza.

September 9-October 9: John Chamberlain, L.A. Louver, Venice, California. On view are Chicotimi Falls (2002), Kickapoo Falls (2002), Valentine Cactus (2003), Pressed-on Sturges (2004), and three Baby Tycoons of 2004: Moe Mentiss, Opiated Asses, and Pardon My Breeze.

September 10, 2004-February 27, 2005: Participates in Design # Art: Functional Objects from Donald Judd to Rachel Whiteread, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution, New York (travels to Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, Colorado, August 5-October 2, 2005). Chamberlain exhibits a foam couch; a table, Table of Tides (1993); and a set of porcelain dishes, Tasted Snow (1996). Designed for Limoges, Tasted Snow adapts Chamberlain's 1990 dinnerware series, comprising a salad bowl cast from a transmission cover and six plates based on flywheels, with gold, silver, and copper trim. On November 6, Chamberlain takes part in the symposium "Dialogues on the Relationships between Design and Art" at the Cooper-Hewitt.

November 19, 2004-January 8, 2005: John Chamberlain, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Xavier Hufkens, Brussels. The exhibition focuses on the use of color in sculpture.

Contributes to Hans Ulrich Obrist's Do It, an art book featuring written instructions and proposals by more than 150 artists.