April 28, 2004
Fred Sandback at Zwirner & Wirth
An Artforum.com review of twin uptown Fred Sandback exhibitions on view through this Saturday. For reasons of timing, it won't be posted online at Artforum's site.
These two shows, which span four decades of Fred Sandback’s career, shed additional light on an artist whose permanent installation at Dia:Beacon has brought fresh and much-deserved attention to his pared-down acrylic yarn sculptures. At Lawrence Markey, one two-stringed sculpture and three preparatory drawings are joined by two atypically expressive mid-1990s drawings on yellow paper. Discovered in the studio after his death last June, these works employ a wider, feathered line made of slightly askew patches of color. Near Zwirner and Wirth’s entrance, a single strand of black yarn stretches diagonally from a corner of the ceiling to the opposite corner of the floor. Sandback’s work forcefully claims maximum space with ultra-minimal means: Though barely visible from the sidewalk, the sculpture both describes and ineluctably alters the space. It is paired with a nearly Constructivist wall design in red, black, and white yarn (created here for the first time, from a proposal made in 1989). The shows, both sensitively installed, are likely the first of many retrospective appreciations and are an excellent model for those to come.