A survey spanning over 50 years of work, Robert Irwin: Primaries and Secondaries is the largest exhibition of renowned artist Robert Irwin's work since 1993. The exhibition features five new major installation works created specifically for MCASD's galleries, and is drawn almost exclusively of works from MCASD's collection.   MCASD has collected the artist's groundbreaking work in depth, and this exhibition includes a wide range of work-from early Abstract Expressionist paintings to minimal canvases, and from early sculptural objects, including his seminal disks and acrylic columns, to large installations. MCASD has an ongoing commitment to collecting and preserving the work of this American master and has over 50 works by Irwin in the Museum's collection.

For 50 years, Robert Irwin has been a pivotal influence in contemporary art as an artist, theoretician, and teacher. Irwin's art investigates perception and phenomenological experience. His early transformative pieces helped to define the aesthetic and issues of the West Coast Light and Space movement in the late 1960s by exploring how phenomena are perceived and altered by consciousness.

Robert Irwin: Primaries and Secondaries is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. The exhibition is sponsored by friends and colleagues in honor of Charles and Tanya Brandes.