Less is More - A group show with Camilla Emson, Mark Davey, Naomi Doran, Kareem Lotfy & Micah Schippa

About

Though this idea has existed in philosophy since the dawn of time, it only really crystallised in art with the advent of minimalism in the 1960s. Despite being quite a contentious moment in the history of art, Minimalism has maintained a grip on art production throughout the rest of the XXth century, and still underlies the work of artists such as Rachel Whiteread, Jeff Koons, Anish Kapoor and Damien Hirst. Such works reduce art to its minimum: solid, geometrical (standardly cubic) shapes which the viewer can understand, in Donald Judd's words, as ‘things as a whole' (rather than a combination of parts). Using ‘less' as a strategy, artists like Judd and Carl Andre hoped to provide an entirely new dimension of the experience of their works. The viewing subject is placed in an entirely new position, where the ‘simple' work speaks to them physically and intuitively rather than mentally. The ‘experience' is thus cast back upon the here and now.