Curated by Peter Weibel

In a 1988 interview, Bruce Nauman expressed his sculptural interest in negative space by quoting a statement he attributed to Willem de Kooning: “When you paint a chair, you should paint the space between the rungs, not the chair itself.” Over the past hundred-odd years, artists have sought to recalibrate the balance between the traditional foundations of sculptural forms—mass and volume, the body—and the spaces they occupy and thereby produce. This sprawling exhibition argues that such reconsiderations have been fundamental to the trajectory of sculptural practice, foregrounding the import of “emptiness, immateriality, transparency, airiness, lightness, light and shadow.” Featuring three hundred works by nearly two hundred artists, the show will be accompanied by a substantial catalogue including an introductory text by the show’s curator, Peter Weibel, as well as artists’ manifestos, historical essays, and interviews.

— Jeffrey Kastner