Essential – The line

Other artists in the exhibition:
Otto Meyer-Amden (1885-1933), René Auberjonois (1872-1957), Félix Vallotton (1865-1925), Ferdinand Hodler (1853-1918), Osvaldo Licini (1894-1958), Jacques Villon (1875-1963), Giorgio Griffa (*1936), Will Insley (1929-2011)

For a good five months, Sol LeWitt’s ‘Wall Drawing 1180, 2005, 10’000 black straight lines and 10’000 black not straight lines within a four-meter circle’ (drawn by Nicolai Angelov in early May) has dominated one of our high-ceilinged exhibition rooms, and this will remain the case for some time. The spatial and visual presence and intensity of the work is almost physical, in any case sensuously tangible. At the same time, the author and draftsman fully recede into the background. The factual impact of the wall drawing ensues entirely from its specific qualities. The textual instructions of Sol LeWitt give legitimacy to the line’s potential. The clarity of the artistic concept produced an overwhelming complexity and lack of overview.

The smart interpreter handled his two instruments, the straight and the non-straight line, in such a way that a finely woven network of lines could be created, with the gaps between the lines reduced to a minimum. Thinking, seeing and acting are a palpable presence at each position within the circle. Nevertheless these important attributes cannot be attributed to a person. Remarkably, an objectification, as it were, has come to pass.

The exemplary independence of the line as a formal artistic element, in this work apparently doing without a personal or particular ‘stroke’ (this important variant of the line being addressed here), has now become the impetus for an exhibition that uses the line as a means of artistic expression or as an artistic motif, visualizing it in a wholly non-didactic, playful and at times surprising way.

A number of artist names deserve mention here: Robert Mangold, Giorgio Griffa, Agnes Martin, David Rabinowitch, Joseph Egan, Richard Tuttle, Donald Judd, Will Insley, Fred Sandback, James Bishop, Antonio Calderara.
A few additional historical accents complete the show.