Fred Sandback

Fred Sandback
Blue Day-glo Corner Piece,
1968/2004
1/32" Elastic Cord & Spring Steel

14 x 12 x 6 inches
(35.6 x 30.5 x 15.2 cm)

Using nothing but ‘air and edges’ he magically alters our experience of the space. In his words, ‘the inherent mysticism resides in persisting in wanting to make something as factual as possible and having it turn out just the other way… the realisation that the simplest and most comfortable of perceptions are shadows’. This installation, conceived with the Fred Sandback Estate, offers a unique spatial experience.

extract of a 1960's text by Sandback:

The first sculpture I made with a piece of string and a little wire, was the outline of a rectangular solid—a 2 x 4 inch—lying on the floor. It was a casual act, but it seemed to open up a lot of possibilities for me. I could assert a certain place or volume in its full materiality without occupying and obscuring it.
I think my first attraction to this situation was to the way it allowed me to play with something both existing and not existing at the same time. The thing itself—the 2 x 4 inch—was just as material as it could be—a volume of air and light above the surface of the floor. Yet my forming of it, the shape and dimension of that figure, had an ambiguous and transient quality. It was funny too—it had an anecdotal quality on the order of “first there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is. . . .” but in reverse.

1975 Notes This text was first published in Fred Sandback. Munich: Kunstraum, 1975, pp. 11-12. My work isn’t environmental. It’s present in pedestrian space, but is not so strong or elaborate that it obscures its context. It doesn’t take over a space, but rather coexists with it. Environmental art makes a new environment and obscures the old one, and that’s as far from what I want as realistic painting is. Most paintings and environmental art are aesthetically discontinuous with ordinary space, which is a quality I don’t want in my work. My work is not illusionistic in the normal sense of the word. It doesn’t refer away from itself to something that isn’t present. Its illusions are simply present aspects of it. Illusions are just as real as facts, and facts just as ephemeral as illusions. Illusionism is making a picture of something. Possibly the trapezoids and rectangles I made were pictures of something, but the open pieces aren’t. I’d rather be in the middle of a situation than over on one side either looking in or looking out. Surfaces seem to imply that what’s interesting is either in front of them or behind them. Interiors are elusive. You can’t ever see an interior. Like eating an artichoke, you keep peeling away exteriors until there’s nothing left, looking for the essence of something. The interior is something you can only believe in, which holds all the parts together as a whole, you hope. There’s an inherent transience to my work. Many larger pieces may only exist for a few days in a particular place, before being put away indefinitely. They are in principle always able to come into existence again at a future time, but will then be part of a new situation. If I remake a piece in a new place, it’s a different piece. If I remake a piece in the same place, it’s still bound to be a different piece than before. The line is a whole, an identity, for a particular place and time. I assume that this identity can be sensed by others. What I object to in a lot of art is its illustrative quality, the quality of being an execution of an idea. I don’t have an idea first and then find a way to express it. That happens all at once. That notion of executing an idea is the same as giving form to material, and it’s a confusion of terms. Ideas are executions. I don’t make “dematerialized art.” I complicate actual situations, and this is as material as anything else. It’s the same false distinction of paring away the matter to get at the idea which allows people to talk of something getting “dematerialized.” The use of numbers or systems in what I do is very casual and incidental. Sometimes pieces have even-numbered sets of measurements if size isn’t critical within general limits. More often, though, pieces are only measured after they’re completed. What I’m doing really doesn’t have anything to do with geometry, and it doesn’t have anything to do with deductive reasoning. The series of pieces for the Kunstraum is a series only because, after the important three-dimensional decisions had been made about the piece, it had a natural ambiguity about it—the parts could equally well be in any one of several positions. So the series is a consequence of those options; it comes after the fact. My work always exists in an interior space. This two-part being in a place is a given condition of all my work. Pieces are conditioned by and bound to a particular place. Still, they are not commentary—they don’t tell a story about a place—they are just there. There’s finally no reason for a piece being here or there. They are limited by the structure of a place, but not deduced from it. The scale I work on is large enough, but it’s particular, too. Large pieces can’t be transferred from place to place without being re-done. That’s a reduction in scale from a lot of sculpture in that it precludes, to an extent, a piece being uprooted from its point of origin without my being involved in it. More and more, working seems to be like performance; not in the sense of presenting a process, but in the conditions required to complete a piece. Some things are done and complete in my studio, but others are ambiguous until done in a particular place. A studio is necessarily vague and hypothetical for pieces like that. I like the connectedness of that kind of piece—you can’t stick it under your arm and carry it home. It has its own place and lifespan. 1977 Statement Notes A sculpture made with just a few lines may seem very purist or geometrical at first. My work isn’t either of these things. My lines aren’t distillations or refinements of anything. They are simple facts, issues of my activity that don’t represent anything beyond themselves. My pieces are offered as concrete, literal situations, and not as indications of any other sort or order. Lately much of my work has been executed in and for a specific place. It’s always been conceived with at least a generalized sort of place in mind, but these pieces are now bound to one site. This doesn’t mean that a piece can’t be redone in a different location, but just that it will be a completely different situation when it is. Of course there are things I’m interested in doing that I don’t have a place for, but because of that they remain necessarily vague and indeterminate. Most of these larger pieces have a rather limited lifespan—existing for a week or a month and then to a large extent disappearing permanently. It’s not that I place any value on their transience—quite the contrary. It’s just that that’s part of the scale of the whole endeavor. A consequence of the inclusivity or complexity that I desire is that there is a good deal of decision making for me about my control over a piece—deciding the limits beyond which my specific intentions can no longer have an influence. This might seem vague or incomplete, though of course I don’t find it so, and I’m certainly not interested in any formalized notion of “indeterminacy.” It’s simply a matter of penetration—making the situation as dense and complex as possible without faking anything. This text was first published in English and Flemish in Plan & Space, exh. cat. (Gent: Koninklijke Academie, 1977). 1989 Children’s Guide to Seeing We all need a place for play, whether it’s jump rope, baseball, or making a sculpture. I’m lucky enough to have the whole Contemporary Arts Museum in which to build my sculptures that are made out of knitting yarn. I need a big space like this because I mean my sculptures to take space and make it into a place—a place that people will move around in and be in. Knitting yarn is great for making the proportions, intervals, and shapes that build the places I want to see and to be in. It’s like a box of colored pencils, only I can use it to make a three-dimensional sculpture instead of making a drawing on paper. My knitting-yarn sculpture is a somewhat distant cousin to some other string games. Maybe the one that uses the most space is kite flying. But the one that is the oldest, and the most universal, is cat’s cradle. Indians, Eskimos, Bushmen, and many other cultures around the world have had games like cat’s cradle since before anyone can remember. Often cat’s cradle is about making a little place—just for yourself, or to share with someone. If you don’t know any of the moves, you can probably learn some from a friend, a relative, or from your mom or dad, if they remember them. If you ask the attendant here in the Museum now, he or she will give you some yarn to use while you are here and to take home. Your fingers might do some thinking while you wander around and look at my sculptures. And here are a few cat’s cradle ideas. Cat’s cradle is nice because you can put it in your pocket when you’re busy with something else, and take it out again when you’re not. Although, as you can see, it’s not so hard to build big things like my sculpture. All it takes is a ball of string. If you were feeling a little adventurous, you could even wrap up your whole house. This text was published in Children’s Guide to Seeing. Fred Sandback: Sculpture, (Houston: Contemporary Arts Museum, 1989).