Untitled

For over three decades, Fred Sandback’s practice consisted of making sculptures that subtly delineate space and volume by stretching materials such as elastic cord within a specific architectural site. In the early 1970s, he began to use acrylic yarn because of its ability to absorb light and demarcate unobtrusive lines of color. The artist explained that his sculptures can “assert a certain place or volume in its full materiality without occupying and obscuring it.” Created specifically for the 73rd American Exhibition at the Art Institute in 1979, Untitled plays with our visual and spatial perception of volume through vacancies, becoming a three-dimensional drawing made of yarn.