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17/3/2006

Fred Sandback

The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh

Solo exhibition

Known for work which uses coloured yarn to draw imaginary planes in space, American artist Fred Sandback (1943—2003), who came to prominence during the heyday of American Minimalism, developed a body of work that is both informed by a signature style and, because of the close interdependence of each piece with the architecture of its location, always different at every showing.

This major survey exhibition traces the development of Fred Sandback’s practice from its beginnings in 1966. Including early metal sculptures, sculptures made with elastic cord and acrylic yarn, sculptural reliefs, drawings and prints, the exhibition presents the rigorously minimal artistic vocabulary established in the work, and the range of ways of working through which it was established.

Sandback’s sculpture is intimately concerned with space, with an individual’s understanding of being in a particular space, and the ways in which interventions into the space might alter and extend this understanding. The work does not measure space, but rather, by exploring its constituent elements - length, width, height, the ceilings and the floors - seeks to comprehend its essence.

The line is Sandback’s primary sculptural form: ‘The line is a whole, an identity, for a particular place and time’. His lines may be freestanding verticals, connecting the top and bottom of a space, controlling its limits with the majestic calm of their upward thrust. They may be angled, descending or ascending, moving dynamically through the space, their relationship to both space and viewer altering as the viewer moves around them. Lines appear in relief, cut into board or strung on the plane of the wall; lines also form shapes, their movement caught and held in the tension of a triangle, a trapezoid or a polygon.

Colour is of equal importance to line in the reduced visual vocabulary of Sandback’s art: ‘I use colour in simple constructive ways - to make a piece more recessive or aggressive, louder or softer, warmer or more brittle - and to balance the relationships that various pieces have as they coexist with each other’. In the early work, strong, luminous, fluorescent blues and oranges appear alongside the primary colours - red, yellow and blue - and the non-colours of black, white and grey. Later, warmer colours and even pastels acquire more weight, with light blue, beige, ochre and pink entering the work. Colour may be intrinsic to the materials used, as with most of the yarn pieces, or applied by the artist - early metal works were painted with lacquer used for painting cars, while in the later, ‘broken line paintings’, Sandback applied acrylic paint to alternate sections of yarn.

Sandback’s work engages with time in two distinct ways. On the one hand, the sculptures encourage an intense focus on the here and now, on the experience of being in the room with them. On the other, they may also draw time out, matching its linearity with their own. The exhibition includes one work made to change over time. Untitled (Series of Sixteen Two part Works) was first shown in 1974 a the John Weber Gallery in New York, and will change twice a week throughout the exhibition so that all 16 of its variations may be seen.

The sculptures, reliefs, drawings and prints selected for the exhibition illustrate the intensity with which Sandback pursed his very specific concerns, in groups of works where no two pieces are exactly alike. The development of the artist’s ideas and forms of expression can be traced from sculpture to sculpture, and also in the works on paper. The exhibition presents Sandback’s systematic reduction of space to its most elementary structures, in which lie the foundation for the extraordinary clarity and freedom of his constructions. Inscribed in the volume of the room, his sculptures rhythmically restructure its space. In the room’s new rhythm, the viewer might discern the presence of Sandback himself:

Exhibtion organised by KunstMuseum Liechtenstein

Exhibtion supported by The Henry Moore Foundation

The Fruitmarket Gallery
45 Market Street - Edinburgh

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