Brian O’Doherty emerged in the 1960s as one of the most multifaceted figures in the New York art scene. Born in Ireland in 1928 and trained as a physician, O’Doherty moved in 1961 to New York, where he soon garnered attention in the burgeoning conceptual art scene as both an artist and a critic. In his work, he investigates limits of perception, language, serial systems, and identity, seeking to engage viewers’ minds as well as their senses. O’Doherty has also invented a number of personas—most notably Patrick Ireland, the artistic alias he adopted in protest against the Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry in 1972 and has used ever since.

The exhibition’s title derives from O’Doherty’s renowned critical essay Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space, first published in 1976, which argues that galleries’ antiseptic white walls have helped to determine the meaning of modern art as much as the artworks themselves. O’Doherty/Ireland strives to move us beyond this white cube, emphasizing the spectator’s agency in the experience and interpretation of art. He often works in series, realizing themes in various media. In his Chess and Labyrinth pieces, viewers are invited to ponder strategic movements filtered through perceptual experiences. The Ogham series—named for the ancient Irish script in which strokes replace Roman letters—turns words into serial marks, challenging the minimalist aesthetic and interrogating language systems. Finally, in a site-specific Rope Drawing (#111) created especially for the Grey Art Gallery, Ireland produces a “drawing in the air” that deconstructs the exhibition space, inviting us literally into his art.