This new publication marks the first comprehensive survey of a seminal body of work that helped make Fred Sandback (1943–2003) into an internationally celebrated artist.
This catalog takes its lead from a 1987 presentation of Sandback’s work at Westfälischer Kunstverein in Münster, also called Vertical Constructions. With a mixture of archival imagery of the sculptures in situ in Münster, new photography of these works installed at David Zwirner in 2016 and an expanded selection of sculpture, this publication is both a historical document and a source for the renewed attention to this body of work.
Scholarship by Yve-Alain Bois revisits the power of Sandback’s immateriality in the context of the vertical constructions while Lisa Le Feuvre, a longtime scholar of sculpture, offers a more historical treatment of the show in relation to the artist’s writings and other works from the 1980s.
About the Author
Fred Sandback (1943–2003) was an American artist known for sculptures that outlined planes and volumes in space. Though he employed metal wire and elastic cord early in his career, the artist soon dispensed with mass and weight by using acrylic yarn to create works that address their physical surroundings, the “pedestrian space,” as Sandback called it, of everyday life. By stretching lengths of yarn horizontally, vertically, or diagonally at different scales and in varied configurations, the artist developed a singular body of work that elaborated on the phenomenological experience of space and volume with unwavering consistency and ingenuity.
Yve-Alain Bois is a professor of art history at the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Bois has written widely on modern and contemporary art, and his 2005 essay on Sandback’s work has remained one of the most influential pieces of scholarship on the artist to date.
Lisa Le Feuvre is head of sculpture studies at the Henry Moore Foundation. Le Feuvre has taught at numerous academic organizations, including Chelsea College of Art, Goldsmiths, Royal College of Art, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, San Francisco Art Institute, and Städelschule, among many others.
David Gray is an editor and art historian. He is presently a board member at the Fred Sandbank Archive; project director, Robert Ryman Catalogue Raisonné; and executive director, The Greenwich Collection, Ltd., a nonprofit foundation. He has contributed to catalogues raisonnés for John Cage, Dan Flavin, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres.
Industry Reviews
"Architects draw in space in order to bring it under control, shaping it so that we may better orient ourselves in relation to our surroundings-Sandback, by contrast, wove his lines through space to activate it, and to remind us of our own role in helping bring it to life."--Julian Rose "ARTFORUM"
"Fred Sandback's artworks aren't standalone masterpieces, in that they simply can't stand alone."--Staff "Centre"
"Radiant exhibition"--Thomas Micchelli "Hyperallergic"
"We are accustomed in art to seeing line as the contour, demarcation and boundary of a form; but at his best, Sandback transforms yarn into pure abstract color movements--simultaneously edge, energy, spine, vein. He transmutes void into volume."--Lance Esplund "Wall Street Journal"
