texts 1975 interview
1975 Interview by Ingrid Rein
Pedestrian Sculptures
du
Carl Andre arranges steel plates on the floor, Don Judd, Robert Morris and Sol LeWitt work, among other things, with series of metal or plastic cubes. Dan Flavin creates apparently simple sculptures out of fluorescent tubes. In terms of material, the exhibition of your most recent work at the Kunstraum München involved three strands of wool in three rooms. What led you to this formally sparse art around 1966–67?
Fred Sandback
As far as I can see, a certain dissatisfaction existed at the time. It had become impossible to continue believing in the rationalism of European and Russian art. Artists wanted concepts that were credible, with which they could work, meaning concepts that were not loaded down in, or interwoven with, some cosmology. They wanted to create their own art on their own terms, in their own time and space. They were concerned with the objectivity of personal reality, and were no longer willing to accept their cultural legacy.
du
Which artists were the precursors of this movement?
Sandback
There was a lot in the air at the time, especially the painting of the 1950s. The factuality of Pollock’s paintings, for example, was so dense, so direct and real, that it only seemed like a small step towards having no sign, nothing at all on the canvas—to simply putting the sign into the room, creating something that had an objective, three-dimensional reality, instead of a reality that always needed the illusion, the being-elsewhere. The strength of that painting was the struggle it involved, between the actual space in which it unfolded and the non-concrete space which up until then it always had to use. Thus it offered the possibility of creating different things.
du
Was Duchamp of significance for your work?
Sandback
Given that he always wanted to throw himself into the world, he was indeed an exciting personality in my eyes.
du
When you began working in 1967, what were the problems you faced?
Sandback
While still at Yale University I was preoccupied with Constructivism and discovered that what I had perceived was quite contrary to the principles of Constructivism, that what Naum Gabo, for example, designated as time and space seemed to me to be stories about time and space. Although Constructivism expressed itself in geometric, simple, non-figurative forms, it often involved a certain idealism, which for me is not plausible. I wanted to work in an objective way. Furthermore, I was preoccupied at the time with the problem of the painting surface. I was always dismayed by it because its significance, what was interesting about it, lay either in front or behind it. And for me that had become a bit incomprehensible, even in sculpture. I wanted to produce something that did not represent a restricted aesthetic situation, but was anchored in everyday, pedestrian space.
du
For your Kunstraum exhibition you stretched a strand of iron-oxide-brown wool four feet above the floor, not diagonally, but a few centimeters away from the corner. This is the only fact that many visitors registered. Isn’t this space constellation more like a challenge to the viewer to get involved in a process of seeing and imagining?
Sandback
To the extent that we are both involved in a process of imagining, my powers of imagination differ from yours, and therefore I have no specific view of how the object should be perceived. I cannot lay down any conditions for it, as both your and my ideas function as they like. My work actually takes place in time. It consists of sixty-four possible constellations and is thus a sculpture series. I set up six of these, each for one week, one after the other. Initially, it is easy to see what the exhibition is about. But then comes the observation of the work: where is it, where are you, and how does the work change when you move about the room? Thus you learn about many of the aspects of the complete work by observing the fragment, that is, by studying the six constellations you learn about all sixty-four of them. What distinguishes this work from my others is the constantly expanding series of experiences and sensations, and not the static situations, although each situation has of course an impact as a static situation.
du
Why do you call your works sculptures, and what do you understand by this?
Sandback
Today the term sculpture more or less covers a multitude. I just use it because it’s there. My sculptures have to do with complex, three-dimensional spatial situations. I regard them as my particular way of complicating and articulating the given situation, the existing space, in our case the Kunstraum München with its three rooms.
du
Of the sixty-four constellations, we know about the other fifty-eight only as a concept, from the catalogue or the drawings. Would you be interested in realizing all the situations?
Sandback
Yes. There are practical reasons why the work is only exhibited as a fragment: you cannot occupy a gallery for sixty-four weeks. I am not particularly interested in the static, closed object, which can be captured in a photograph or drawing. That’s just a practical rendering of the thing, showing how all the situations could be created. What really interests me is the concrete three-dimensional space in which we find ourselves. Furthermore, there is always a certain ambivalence in my work between an easily graspable form and the actual complex presence of the realized work. Basically, the work can only be experienced when you experience and see this. It has absolutely nothing to do with Conceptual Art or with something you conceive.
du
Often the steel wires, elastic bands, and woolen strands you use are colored. What does color signify?
Sandback
In general, color has no meaning that can be described, just like my works. That is why it’s there. The different color possibilities signify nothing, suggest nothing, show nothing. The color is linked to the respective spatial situation, it does not lead to something else. The same object in another color produces a new situation, because, as an existing element, the color is an important part of the work.
du
What role does time play?
Sandback
I believe that, for the viewer, time plays a role in my works that is diametrically opposed to that in a more or less classical sculpture. In Michelangelo’s David, for example, you have to walk around the work to collect the individual pieces of information necessary for understanding the work as a whole. Meaning that the process of perception lasts until you have arrived at a feeling for the unity. By contrast, in my works the unity is given from the beginning, and the subsequent process of perception can last for ages. So my works exist in normal, everyday time.
du
Why do you think that the pedestrians, the wider public, find it difficult to grasp this formally reduced art?
Sandback
Perhaps they walk too fast, perhaps they should approach things a bit slower and not think too much. You can’t just come, look at my work, and expect it to provide a story or image of something. But this way of thinking about art is very widespread. The image of my perception is reflective [reflexive?] It can only be seen.
du
When confronted with your work, as so often with Minimal Art, people tend to ask about its social relevance.
Sandback
What I do is the most relevant thing I can do, namely, encounter and explore my own perceptions. Given that I do this as a human being, it ought to be of general relevance. I work as concretely and directly as possible; I am far removed from any ivory tower.
This interview was first published in German as “Fussgängerische Skulpturen. Ein Interview von Ingrid Rein mit dem Minimal-Art-Künstler Fred Sandback.” Du (November 1975), pp. 9–10.