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27/1/2007

WallCeilingFloor

Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham

Works by William Anastasi, Donald Judd, and Fred Sandback

Curator: Gail Andrews

The exhibition presents selected works of three seminal artists who, beginning in the 1960’s, explored not only the forms and uses of the materials they used to create their objects, but also the relationships between these objects and the physical limits of the spaces in which they were to be placed.

Before such explorations, art had traditionally been thought to be some form of an object itself, whether hung on a wall or placed on a pedestal. That assumption—the independence of the object from its framework—was and is challenged by the works of Fred Sandback (1943-2003), Donald Judd (1928-1994) and William Anastasi (b. 1932). Each of the works in this exhibition should be seen not only as independent objects but also in relationship to the walls, ceilings or floors. In fact, in certain of the works, a key element is less the form of the chosen material than the open space of the so-called “white box" defined by the gallery’s physical constraints, then transformed by the intrusions of the works into that space.

Fred Sandback used for his sculptures ordinary acrylic yarn. With variously colored yarn, Sandback drew lines in space that generated spatial tensions above, below and laterally within the space in which they were installed. The dimensions of the principal sculptures in this exhibition, The First of Sixteen Two-Part Variations of Two Diagonal Lines, were conceived by Sandback to be variable in dimension depending upon the three dimensions of a given space. They consist of two diagonal stretches of cardinal red yarn, one ascending from a lower corner of the room to the ceiling, the other descending from an upper corner of the room to the floor. The sculptures produce a dynamic of competing spatial forces that change as the viewer moves through the space. The viewer’s interaction with the Diagonal Lines is itself a “variation" on them, such that the individual perceptions of the viewer become indispensable elements of the artwork.

Donald Judd mastered the art of precisely cut and mathematically ordered structures, often fabricated in a series of rectangular prisms. Judd typically used common industrial materials such as plywood, stainless steel or Plexiglas in his work. His sculptures frequently take on the form of stacks of “boxes" hung on a wall or placed directly on the floor; and often incorporate elements of color, whether by means of Plexiglas elements bonded to metal, or enameled or anodized paint applied directly to the metal surfaces.

In all of his works, Judd used simplified forms to delineate and deform the space surrounding each of them. The works themselves seem to bond with the wall or floor. For example, his Wall Project (No. 32)—shown in this exhibition for the first time in a museum setting—consists of two galvanized iron plates inset into the wall in intervals spaced to divide the wall into thirds. Judd’s instructions for fabricating the work require that the dimensional ratio of the wall recesses to the height and length of the plates equals 1:2:3. As set into the wall, the viewer is free to question whether each iron plate is a separate “art object," whether the two together are a work of art, whether the cut-out wall as a whole is the work, whether the shadows within the recesses are elements of the work.

William Anastasi’s work is frequently not limited to a characteristic set of materials or formal concerns. His works at times are defined by mathematically determined limits, as with What Was Real in the World, a stack of 112 concrete bricks laid in 7 tiers of 16 bricks each, a grouping one might see on a construction site. Other works depend in large part on chance determinants, as with Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, a work created by draping a videotaped performance of that symphony over two nails spaced at the width of the artist’s arms stretched upward and outward diagonally.

Anastasi’s works in this exhibition reflect his intention to de-construct the gallery site, whether by removing part of the wall’s own structure, “drawing" lines on the wall by means of the shadows cast by a series of embedded nails, or creating a plane of light in the space between the wall and the ceiling by angling two sets of track lighting fixtures at each other. The result is that the viewer has to rethink his perceptions of the walls, ceiling and floor of the gallery, and what in fact is the art they contain.

Image: William Anastasi - What Was Real in the World (1964)

The Birmingham Museum of Art
2000 Eighth Avenue North - Birmingham
Museum Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 10am - 5pm; Sunday 12 - 5pm

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