“In A Pictorial Framework” was a series of installations by artists who worked with visual elements on an environmental scale. The exhibition comprised five consecutive installations that were presented throughout the summer of 1979. The pieces shown were complex, impermanent, and unwieldy installations, that were for the most part designed and executed especially for the exhibition, and — in the case of Gundersen Clark — accompanied by performances that were scheduled at regular intervals throughout the period of the installation.The content of each installation was idiosyncratic, involved fantasy or ritual, and addressed the emotions as well as the mind of the viewer. In each case, two and three-dimensional elements were arranged in architectural spaces which in some way dictated the viewpoint of the spectators.

Finley Fryer’s The Cat Band invited the viewer to wander through a stained glass entrance and among the painted plaster “prop-performers.” Likewise, Phyllis Bramson’s series of wall-to-floor tableaux allowed the viewer to explore the literal and mental spaces of her work. David Saunders employed images as Allegories in his installation work Scope, while Story Mann psychologically intimidated his audience by using a dramatic film of a burning house and video documentation of a dog fight. Bruce Gundersen and Robert Clark, in their performance entitled Dagar Λne, combined ambiguous movement and sound in a cryptic, elaborate structure.