FRED SANDBACK

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1. Fred Sandback, "Remarks on my actively engaged, and it had utopian Sculpture 1966--1986," Fred Sandback glimmerings of art and life happily Sculpture 1966-1986, (Mannheim: cohabitating." (Ibid) . 5 Kunsthalle, 1986), p. 12. 6. Fred Sandback, quoted in 74 Front 31 J 2. Ibid. Street: The Fred Sandback Museum, Sculpture 3. Ibid., pp. 12-13. Winchendon, Massachusetts (New York : 4 4. Ibid., p. 13. Dia Art Foundation , 1982), p. 4. 11 5. Sandback and a friend coined the term 7. While a student at Yale School of Art --2 to define space that was "literal, flat­ and Architecture, in 1967 Sandback took 8 7 footed and everyday. The idea was to have courses from both Robert Morris and 6 the work right there along with everything Donald Judd. I 10 I else in the world, not up on a spatial 8. Fred Sandback, quoted in 74 Front 9 pedestal. The term also involved the idea Street, p. 4. of utility-that a sculpture was there to be 9. Ibid .

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l. Untitled 1992 7. Untitled 1996 u~ SelectedBibliography >, Acrylic yarn (terracotta) Bas relief u~ Fred Sandback (Zurich: Kunsthaus, 1985). Fred Sandback: Sculpture 1966-1986 Collection of the artist Acrylic housepaint on wood panel 0 0 Fred Sandback : Diagonal Construction/ (Mannheim: Kunsthalle, 1986). 6: 2. Untitled 1977/1996 Collection of the artist ,..: r- Broken Lines. Skulpturen und Fred Sandback Vertical Constructions Acrylic yarn (light blue) 8. Untitled 1992/96 ~ ii Zeichnungen (Hannover: Kestner- (Mi.inster: Westfalischer Kunstverein, Collection of the artist Two-part vertical construction ',: Gesellschaft, 1987). 1987). 3. Untitled 1996 Acrylic yarn (pink) ~ Fred Sandback Sculpture (New Haven The Art of Fred Sandback: A Survey Six-part vertical construction Collection of the artist and Houston : Yale University Art Gallery (Krannert, Illinois: Krannert Art Museum, Acrylic yarn (white) 9. Untitled, diagonal (one offour) and Contemporary Arts Museum, 1991). 1985). Collection of the artist 1970/96 4. Untitled 1996 Acrylic yarn (cardinal red) Fred Sandback was born in Bronxville, New York, in 1943. After studying philosophy at I Bas relief, diptych Collection of the artist Yale College, he entered the sculpture program at Yale University School of Art and Acrylic housepaint on wood panel JO. Untitled 1977 Collection of the artist Two-part vertical construction Architecture, receiving a B.F.A., then, in 1969, an M.F.A .. Since the late sixties, 5. Untitled 1977 Acrylic yarn (black) Sandback has exhibited widely, both in the United States and abroad. Dia Center for the Four-part vertical construction Collection Dia Center for the Arts Arts has more than forty works by Sandback in its collection. ( Acrylic yarn (black) 11. Untitled 1996 Collection Dia Center for the Arts Bas relief, diptych Support for this exhibition has been provided by the members of the Dia Art Council, the September12, 1996-June 29, 1997 6. Untitled 1996 Acrylic housepaint on wood panel major annual support group of Dia Center for the Arts. Acrylic yarn (light brown, dark gray) Collection of the artist 548 West22nd Street, NewYork City Collection of the artist Mark Taylor will lecture on Sculpture on Thursday, April 3, 1997 at 6:30 pm at Dia. L.C.

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In these reliefs, he

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Although quite small in size,

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Given that these linear trajectories do

Within a matrix that encompasses the

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Compared both with his own plastic work as

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at the same time, miniature objects

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Whether principally shadow or tone, appears it as an

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These reliefs similarly evoke their origins, through stressing both

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The reliefs, therefore, appear to be fragments of something vast­

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Sandback has created a space that has a wholly different sense of

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urface and yet extends far beyond into it the surrounding space. Fact and illusion

Into this finely wrought mix, he has introduced an entirely new body of work. Composed sometimes of one, sometimes two panels, these small, painted, wooden works seem to assume an identity by drawing on his printmaking practices rather than on his three-dimensional sculpture well as with prints made by his contemporaries, Sandback's graphic work is remarkable for the attention he pays to the material process by means of which each print is generated their physicality and their surface textures. By contrast, they are fundamentally

negative-by elimination absence as distinct from edge an or linear trajectory

nearby, in yam

segments from a larger context, yet

different from his previous sculpture that in line is now conjured by drawing in

strictly linear alongside planar and three-dimensional forms, free-standing and wall­

these reliefs have deceptively a ambiguous scale, largely because cross-section in the incorporated a body of work which exists on and in relation to its supporting planar dimension of any single line roughly is commensurate with that of any drawn,

Through the introduction of these new sculptures, Sandback has greatly enriched and complicated the language of this exhibition

based sculptures, together with hybrids that straddle these two zones, he has

s have been newly interwoven, their interdependence revealed in unexpected ways. Moreover, by reconfiguring once more the relationship between the empty and the substantive corporeality to from it anything found hitherto in his art

persuades us that the apparition of space derives not from the linear negative from the physical plane between these gaps not inhabit a single plane but overlap, and hence exist in depth, space for the first time in Sandback' s art seems to have neither boundaries nor limits.

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He explores material relationships

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but they don't refer to anything.

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While for him yam in itself carries no

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His work never is environmental, that if

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Elaborating on this

'Trying to weed one out in favor of the

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of the kind that had preoccupied him during

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fact space coextensive with that of the viewer

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sors. The artist also excluded from this

soft contours conjure less a crisp, less rigid line

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acrylic yam

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" he asserts:

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Illusionistic artrefers you away from its factual existence

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The apprehension of his work thus involves process a bodily of

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ame physical site as the viewer. Inhabiting what the artist has dubbed

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intuitively adjusts a work with each new presentation, to each new location sculptures, space takes on not only definition but an incorporeal palpability

the point where the spectator concentrates less on the edges the forms, than on the planar or volumetric components contained within. Whether transparent geometries simple or linear trajectories, Sandback's sculptures unequivocally occupy the "pedestrian space"-the ordinary matter-of and the of site-they reveal themselves over time, from different vantages, and according

based viewing, phenomenologicala experiencing of each piece in situ

to different perspectives. literal and of the concrete as primary its mode of being.

been careful to distinguish his sculpture from certain kinds of installation practices, many of which also evolved from Minimalist precepts implies disregarding the context. On the contrary, as he states parts of the environment, but it's always coexistent with that environment, as opposed to overwhelming destroying or that environment in favor of different a one

Burgeoning during the heyday of Minimalism, Sandback's work has distinguished and differentiated itself from that of his immediate forbears by his eschewal of the reductively

via the incorporeal rather than through physical matter-via the interplay of vacancy and volume-while recognizing that the illusory and the factual are inextricably intertwined "Fact and illusion are equivalents

way is my work illusionistic

instead on his now preferred medium significant connotations, its slightly fuzzy

other is dealing with an incomplete situation.''

towards something else. My work is full of illusions

In choosing from his repertoire those three-dimensional works to be included in this exhibition, Sandback eliminated early pieces which utilize metal rods or wire

than that produced by metal, just as its matte surfaces absorb rather than reflect light.

with their ambience than did their predece selection works employing multicolored line the mid-eighties, works which forged highly a dynamic relationship with their milieux.

Taken together these qualities permit the pieces made from yam to coexist more subtly

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FRED SANDBACK

The key implications of that

in limpid forthright terms

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site, the proportions and forms subtly

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ual act, but it

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but may it be that the more complete

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ued these governing insights with remarkable

he found through his seemingly "casual act

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creating body a of work that is informed by a signature

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could assert certain a place or volume in its full materiality without

e remain at the heart of his practice today

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curing it."

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.lying on the floor. It was a ca

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he avowed, in that same article from 1986

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a result a of the close interdependence of each work with the architectural

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pace and time that they're in

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culpture I made with piece a of string and a little wire was the outline of a

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Sculpture

rectangular solid

possibilities for me," Fred Sandback wrote in looking 1986, back over twenty years of activity to a seminal sculpture he had executed in 1966. determining impul

sculpture that did not have an inside means whereby he

occupying and ob

For three decades, Sandback has pur consistency and inventiveness style and yet site which in realized, is it ever different in its manifestations

feeling persists

situation I'm after only is constructed in time slowly, with the individual sculptures as its

commentator on his work, the artist has elucidated his abiding wish "to be in some sort of constituting material relationship with environment my

of continuing a attitude and relationship to things the particular

constituent parts

Sandback has seamlessly integrated older with newer pieces for his odyssey through Dia's second floor gallery. He orients and grounds the viewer particularin a place situation, by means of stringent a selection from his deliberately circumscribed lexicon­

substructure may be used many times, it appears each time in a new light. It is the

each sculpture newly parsed for the site done with," he explained. "I continue to work with older schemata and formats begin to get what want I out of them only after many reworkings

measure of the relative success of piece, a not necessarily that a new structure emerges, but that a familiar one attains, in its present manifestation actuality

measurements and the tone or hue of the yam may be adapted or altered as the artist

The character of any particular work is relative to it calibrated response in to the architectonics of the area each inhabits. Both the actual