Eric Bainbridge — Viewpoints — Exhibition Brochure, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 1986

Exhibition brochure / catalogue
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
Offset print on folded lightweight stock
1986

Rare exhibition brochure produced for Eric Bainbridge as part of the Viewpoints series at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, in 1986. Features Bainbridge’s early anthropomorphic sculpture Handle (1986) on the cover: a fur-covered hybrid form positioned somewhere between cartoon mascot, damaged modernist object, stuffed animal, and post-minimal grotesque.

The publication includes biography, exhibition history, checklist, and installation documentation from a formative period in Bainbridge’s practice. Produced at a moment when British sculpture was shifting away from strict formalism toward theatricality, absurdity, synthetic materials, bodily humour, and unstable object identities, the brochure now reads as a document of transition between post-minimalism, Neo-Geo-era excess, abject sculpture, and a specifically British strain of awkward anti-monumentality.

Seen now, the object feels unexpectedly contemporary. Bainbridge’s sculptures anticipate later conversations around mascot aesthetics, failed figuration, plush materiality, emotional infrastructure, low-theory object culture, and the strange psychological register later explored by artists including Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, Jason Rhoades, and certain post-internet sculptural practices.

Condition: Good vintage condition. Light edge wear, soft creasing, handling marks, and minor surface discoloration consistent with institutional circulation and archive storage.

A temporary museum support object retained long enough to become sculpture-adjacent again.

Shipping and handling included.