FRED SANDBACK
Being in a place
23 June until 3 September 2006
Opening: Thursday, 22 June 2006, 7pm
Curator: Christiane Meyer-Stoll
(Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz)
Neue Galerie Graz
Sackstrasse 16, A-8010 Graz
T 43-316-82 91 55 / F 43-316-81 54 01
neuegalerie [at] museum-joanneum.at
Opening times:
TueSun 10am6 pm, Thu 10am8pm
Fred Sandback (1943-2003) features with numerous works in the Neue Galerie collection, unequalled in Austria and also Europeanwide one of the largest collections. Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein presented the Fred Sandback exhibition at the end of 2005, the first comprehensive museum exhibition of works of the American artist in Europe for twenty years. It was therefore important and a matter of course for the Neue Galerie to take part in this project. Further stations are The Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh and the capcMusée dart contemporain in Bordeaux. The core of the show, that was created in close co-operation with Amy Sandback, comprises a selection of more than fifty works from the period 1966 to 2003.
Fred Sandback pushed the 1960s conceptual and minimalistic approaches to the notion of sculpture to their extremes. His sculptures represent a complex blend of lines, surfaces and volumes. He spans richly coloured acrylic threads between the ceiling, floor, walls and corners of an exhibition room, giving the viewer the opportunity to pause for a while, generating magic boundaries and volumes to be traversed. Sharply drawn lines give the impression of edges of panes of glass or cause the room to vibrate like the strings of an instrument. Sandback himself talked about his sculptures appearing in a pedestrian space, thus accounting for the viewers movement in the room and the fact that it is necessary to engage actively with these sculptures. Sandbacks art works were rightly described as nomadic, his spatial constructions take place in the here and now, compelling the viewer to assume a physical and intellectual stance. The teachings of the Constructivists, since their virtual volumes from 1920, influencing modern sculpture from Bauhaus to Tinguely, Zero and cyberspace, have shown that space is a construction. Fred Sandback freed the equation being and space from anthropomorphy like no other space artist before him, just because he put the construction of space through man in the focus of interest.
For us this exhibition is a homage to Fred Sandbacks work.
The exhibition is accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue that features essays by Yve-Alain Bois, Thomas McEvilley, and Thierry Davila, presenting all texts and interviews by Fred Sandback for the first time as well as an extensive illustrated chronology. The book is edited by Friedemann Malsch and Christiane Meyer-Stoll and published by Hatje-Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit.
Contact:
Neue Galerie Graz am Landesmuseum Joanneum
Sackstrasse 16, A-8010 Graz / Austria
T 43-316-82 91 55 / F 43-316-81 54 01
neuegalerie@museum-joanneum.at
Opening times: TueSun 10am6 pm, Thu 10am8pm
