| Artist | Title | Year | Description |
|---|
| Alphone Allais | “Premières communions de jeunes filles chlorotiques par un temps de neige” (First Communion of Anaemic Young Girls in the Snow) | 1883 | This work consisted of a sheet of plain white paper. The joke: the “scene” was entirely invisible, leaving it to the imagination of the viewer. It’s one of the earliest examples of invisible art, predating 20th-century conceptual art. [1] |
| Yves Klein | "Zone de Sensibilité Picturale Immatérielle" (Zone of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility) | 1959 | Consists of the sale of documentation of ownership of empty space; the piece was born in a ritual in which the buyers would burn said documentation. Later, in 2022, an unburned receipt for these ‘works of art’ was sold at auction for £1.2m. [2] |
| Marinus Boezem | "Show V: Immateriële ruimte" (Immaterial space) | 1965 | Consists of three "air doors" made from currents of cold and warm air blown into the room. [3] |
| Michael Asher | "Vertical Column of Accelerated Air" | 1966 | Drafts of pressurized air. [4] |
| Art & Language (group) | "Air-Conditioning Show" or "Air Show" | 1967 | An empty room with two air conditioning units; the artwork is "what is felt and said about it", and not anything tangible. [5] |
| James Lee Byars | "The Ghost of James Lee Byars" | 1969 | The artwork itself is the emptiness and darkness of a pitch-black room. [6] [7] |
| Robert Barry | "Telepathic Piece" | 1969 | An artwork "the nature of which is a series of thoughts that are not applicable to language or image", which Barry would communicate telepathically to visitors during the exhibit. [8] |
| Yoko Ono | "One-Woman-Show" | 1971 | Announcement in the December 2 issue of the Village Voice of non-existent exhibition at MoMA in New York. [9] |
| Chris Burden | "White Light/White Heat" | 1975 | A 22-day performance at Ronald Feldman Gallery in which the artist lay on a high platform just below the ceiling, remaining out of sight. [10] |
| Ed Ruscha | "Rocky II" | c. 1979 | Sculpture positioned by the artist at an unknown location in the Mojave Desert, Nevada. [11] |
| Andy Warhol | "Invisible Sculpture" | 1985 | Consists of an invisible, intangible sculpture atop a white pedestal. [5] |
| Gianni Motti | "Magic Ink" | 1989 | A series of drawings sketched with a special ink that was visible only for a brief instant before vanishing. [12] |
| Maurizio Cattelan | "Untitled" | 1991 | Police report of stolen invisible artwork. [13] |
| Tom Friedman | "Untitled (A Curse)" | 1992 | Similar to Warhol's sculpture, but a witch was reportedly hired to curse the space immediately above the pedestal. [5] |
| Martin Creed | "Work No. 227: The lights going on and off" | 2000 | Empty gallery room in which the lights are switched on and off every five seconds, periodically rendering the space fully dark and empty. [14] |
| Teresa Margolles | "Aire" (Air) | 2003 | Similar to Air Show, the artwork consists of a room with air humidified with water used to wash corpses before autopsy. [15] |
| Jeppe Hein | "Invisible Labyrinth" | 2005 | A maze with invisible and intangible walls; visitors are given headphones that vibrate when they "touch" a wall. [4] |
| Roman Ondak | "More Silent Than Ever" | 2006 | The artwork consists of a covert listening device supposedly hidden somewhere in the (empty) exhibition room: visitors are told they are being eavesdropped. The device itself cannot be seen, and no evidence is given that it really exists. [16] |
| Salvatore Garau | "Buddha in Contemplazione" (Buddha in Contemplation) | 2021 | An invisible, intangible sculpture. [17] |
| Salvatore Garau | "Io Sono" (I am) | 2021 | Another invisible, intangible sculpture, that occupies a square area with side of 5 ft (1.5 m). [17] |
| Ruben Gutierrez | "This Sculpture Makes Me Cry (A Spell)" | 2022 | An immaterial, invisible sculpture atop a small white pedestal, displayed as part of a bigger exhibit. It is said to represent what the artist cannot see, but which affects him emotionally, making him feel invisible and insignificant. [18] [19] |
