Galerie Hubert Winter

Fred Sandback
16. May – 28. June 2008
Man verliert sich, verirrt sich im Leben.
Wer zog denn den Pfad,
die Spur eines Körpers,
War's Traum, war's Ahnung?
Das Unwetter schläft unterdes
schläft in der Sonne.
Die letzten Zeilen in: Jean Cayrol, Muriel oder Die Zeit der Wiederkehr. Dt. v. Peter Stein. Olten, Walter Vlg, 1965.

Sandback uses minimal means to pose what are very basic spatial questions. And that´s why I see a close link between his works and architecture. He addresses the question of how we view area: Do we see two or four cord, for example, or only the rectangle between them? I like the idea that the cords are only there to draw attention to the space between them. It´s like in a mirror, which we see both as a flat surface and as our own mirror image. Sandback´s work always alludes to its environment and is so readily understandable that there is no need to pick it apart or ask how and why it came about. All that becomes clear the moment we see it.
Sandback´s work, therefore, like mine, too, is not derived from the modernist concept of the hermetic work of art. The work does not consist of ist materiality or of its crafted objecthood alone. It rather develops ist true quality through ist dialectical relationship with ist environment. I find that very far-sighted, a great artistic achievement, especially as Sandback did this at a time when everyone else was doing something completely different. Because contrary to their own theories, many artists like Donald Judd, for example-continue to regard the work as a very aesthetic, object oriented sculpture. Whereas Sandback, working at more or less the same time, abandoned the object completely, which is why in my opinion he is much more radical and more interesting than Judd, for example. Except that art history took a shine to Judd and regrettably not to Sandback.


The artist Olafur Eliasson talked to Gabriele Schor. In: „Held Together With Water“, Art from the Sammlung Verbund. Hrsg.v.Gabriele Schor. Ostfildern, Hatje-Cantz, 2007. S.221