Material Actions features key sculptural works from MCASD’s permanent collection that give the sentient body in action a central position in their artistic discourse. Sculpture by Bruce Conner, Martin Puryear, David Hammons, and Petah Coyne, together with works on paper by Sophie Calle and Nigel Poor explore the physical qualities of materials and their transformation and perception by the body’s senses in a variety of ways.

The artists in Material Actions engage the senses through actions and performances that vary from gathering materials as a form of meditation, the making of hand-craft objects as a form of self-identification, and the categorization and classification and of other people’s bodies, to processes that highlight socially-constructed identities. All, however, give preeminence to lived experience; to acting and making in the world over the formal and representational autonomy of the art object.