Charles Ginnever

[6] 1957 was a pivotal year for Ginnever, when he drove from San Francisco to New York City with fellow sculptor Mark di Suvero.

On the week-long cross-country journey, Ginnever and di Suvero spent their time discussing abstract expressionism and concluded that sculpture "hadn't matched the accomplishments in painting",[7] and they were determined to correct that.

Dropping di Suvero off in New York City, Ginnever continued on to Cornell University, where he had accepted a teaching position and where he simultaneously completed his MFA in 1959.

The idea of the viewer as an active participant was brought to its apex in the "Happening", an art form whose name was coined by artist Allan Kaprow.

[13] In 1962, Ginnever produced and directed Ergo Suits, a "multimedia many-act event, best described as a 'happening'",[14] that was held first in Woodstock and then Bridgehampton, New York in the same summer.

This event, transcribed and disseminated throughout the art world by the freelance curator Seth Siegelaub, had lasting effects on the movement and marked important milestones in the careers of the artists who participated.

Ginnever's 1964-65 sculpture Dante's Rig, his first made from purchased materials, marked another important turning point in his career and set the stage for much of his later work.

Other founding members included John Raymond Henry, Kenneth Snelson, Lyman Kipp and Mark di Suvero.

"[21] Thus, when walking around one of Ginnever's sculptures, viewers are challenged when what they thought they would see at another viewpoint turns out to be a completely different form from what they expected, and they are left questioning if they are even viewing the same piece.

Titled after a film by Akira Kurosawa that tells the same story four times from four distinct perspectives, Ginnever's Rashomon "slips from whatever mental grasp of it a viewer may have won" whenever it is placed in a new position.

In a society in which the integration of space and time is consigned to the realm of idea rather than that of direct physical experience, the work proposes to return human perception to its original state.