Carl Andre: 61 Part Steel Invention

About

Alongside this floor sculpture consisting of 61 steel plates, the exhibition presents wooden works from 2002 and poems from the 60s.

With his Element Series, 1960, the American artist set the parameters of his oeuvre, thus fundamentally questioning the concept of sculpture that had until then held validity. Using identical pieces of wood of the same size, he assembled works in various configurations, later extending this procedure to several materials, like stone and various metals. He leaves the elements themselves, which were usually industrially produced, untreated. The works are defined by the individual material components and the space surrounding them. In a 1980 interview, Carl Andre described this as follows: “Twenty years ago I realized that my vocation was to use my materials as cuts into space rather than cutting into the space of my materials”

Carl Andre lives in New York. His work has been presented in numerous comprehensive exhibitions, most recently in the retrospective Sculpture as Place, which was shown at Dia Art Foundation, Beacon, 2014; Museo Nacional Reina Sofia, 2015; Museum für Gegenwartskunst Hamburger Bahnhof, 2016; Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, 2017 and at Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2017.