Rauschenberg: The 1/4 Mile

(Los Angeles–September 24, 2018) The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents Rauschenberg: The 1/4 Mile, an expansive installation featuring pioneering American artist Robert Rauschenberg’s magnum opus The 1/4 Mile or 2 Furlong Piece (1981–98). Completed over a period of 17 years, The 1/4 Mile is composed of 190 panels that, combined, measure approximately 1,000 feet—or nearly a quarter mile—in length. Signifying the distance between Rauschenberg’s studio and his home on Captiva Island, Florida, the quarter-mile span is representative of the artist’s central belief in working in the “gap between” art and life. Cross-cultural exchange was a driving force of Rauschenberg’s art practice. He traveled extensively throughout his career, and he sourced the wide range of materials and imagery included in The 1/4 Mile from Asia, Europe, Latin America, northern Africa, and the United States. The piece comprises an eclectic array of materials including various textiles, images culled from mass media, and photographs by the artist that are interspersed between bold passages of paint, while everyday objects such as chairs, cardboard boxes, and traffic lights add sculptural depth. The work also has an audio element, composed of sounds that Rauschenberg recorded during his travels. Together the visual and aural components of The 1/4 Mile, coupled with its monumental scale, create an immersive viewing environment. This exhibition marks the first time the work will be exhibited in its entirety.