Fred Sandback’s presence has been recognized for a decade and a half, a period during which he has exhibited frequently and widely but relatively little has been written about him. His work, and to some extent his own terse, hard-to-argue-with statements about it, have been efficient prophylactics against verbal excess. His pieces, he says, are not illusionistic. Indeed, simple linear geometries on paper or in space, realized with metal rods or colored string, offer few illusions, and in fact belie the usual equations made between horizontals and landscape, verticals and the figure. Nor, he says, are they environmental. Three-dimensional drawings have the weight of ideas, not of objects, and Sandback’s do not alter interiors but underline them in various, always subtle ways. The combined physical and visual stress of the six 1967 projects shown here was very slight; the gallery’s rudimentary decor at moments seemed more imposing. Yet Sandback’s work is riveting. With any willingness or concentration on the viewer’s part it can quickly lift away a good deal of perceptual debris and open eyes.
This is Yankee art. Its character doesn’t change much with time or fashion, and it gives if you do. A careless glance will obtain a stinting reply, a more careful one will yield considerable warmth—fuzzy string, for instance, in soft colors and with the feeling, though not the appearance, of forthright, structural moorings. Sandback, who usually gauges rather than measures, shows the equivalent of perfect pitch in his decisions about placement and scale. A low, red parallelogram on the floor is just far enough from the wall, just compact enough in its proportions to appear dense and objectlike, as if the air, primed by Sandback’s attention to it, solidified ever so slightly within his perimeter of string. Two short lengths of yellow yarn link a line on the wall to one on the floor and mold space, create an actual and almost palpable curved plane, simply by being relaxed within a right measure. Sandback’s two-dimensional drawings are graced with a similar balance. Paper, like air, becomes climate, both consistent and mutable. The lines, like characters (calligraphic or dramatic), are inflected by conditions yet are free.
Sandback’s work has changed little in 16 years. It has become perhaps bolder, less self-contained, inclined more toward a dynamic role within interiors than a discrete one. The earlier pieces on view here, tacit and cozy, make demands on one’s tolerance for flagrant sincerity. I looked hard for evidence of smugness or primness, but found none.
—Lisa Liebmann
