New York
The Minimalist work of Fred Sandback does not cease to amaze, with its elegant simplicity and radical transformation of line into sculpture. Especially when presented in complex installations such as this one, the poetic depth and large range of this unique oeuvre begins to shine. “Vertical Constructions” re-created and expanded on Sandback’s landmark 1987 exhibition at the Westfälischer Kunstverein in Münster, Germany, which featured six then new works, each one engaging the vertical space. To reunite these sculptures in Chelsea almost 30 years later required collaboration between various private and public collections, bringing together works from the Deichtorhallen Hamburg/ Falckenberg Collection, the Menil Collection, and the Whitney Museum, among others. Meanwhile, similar works stemming from the earlier and later years of Sandback’s almost four-decade-long career offered additional context. For Sandback, line served as both self-assertive statement and delineation of space. He worked with the volume of sculpture without the opaque mass. Each work draws attention to itself in some way—to its length or the direction of the line, for instance, be it vertical…see the entire review in the print version of April’s Sculpture magazine.
