PEDESTRIAN SPACE – FRED SANDBACK

In 2017, the Venet Foundation presented “Pedestrian Space”, the first exhibition in France devoted to the work of American artist Fred Sandback in the decade following his show at the Musée de Grenoble. Rarely seen in France in recent years, Sandback’s work is well-known to visitors of the Dia Foundation, which has put his work on permanent view at Dia: Beacon and dedicated an entire museum to it from 1981 to 1996. His work will also be familiar to visitors to the world’s top international institutions, which regularly pay homage to him.

The Minimalist artist Fred Sandback (1943-2003) made sculptures from wire, elastic cord, and, more generally, colored yarn stretched in space. What interested the artist was the three-dimensional space in which we find ourselves, a space he is able to mold, shape, and carve out anew using a simple line made of yarn. An elastic straight line stretched between the floor and the ceiling reveals no structure, no tools for maintaining it—and gives the illusion of a thin rod balanced on one end.

Simultaneously, a series of Venet’s Indeterminate Surfaces was shown in the Usine (Factory).