Galerie Konrad Fischer shows a work by American object artist Carl Andre dating from 1978: nonexpendable capital from a pioneer of Minimalism who has been represented by the gallery for more than 40 years now. The straight row of 90-centimeter-long, roughly-hewn wooden blocks runs 30 meters: with a square base measuring 30 × 30 centimeters, the blocks are positioned alongside each other, alternately lying and standing horizontally and vertically. The sculpture’s impact is concentrated in its material reductionism and geometrical clarity of layout. Placed in this way, even in the most distracting of surroundings, a hundred blocks of at first glance absolutely identical formats create a wave field of solemnly quiet wooden thrones. Once intended as a radical departure, even a rebellion against illusion, metaphysics and pathos, this work has become a meditative focal point and a trademark at the same time.

By titling the work Thrones 30 years ago, Andre not only named it but also produced a didactic poem in one word. It is the key to this dualist juxtaposition, for this wealth of objects is also used to describe the emptiness in between. Rise and fall. Coming and going. Being and not being. The artist does not want his sculptures to have “a fixed viewpoint”, but to be experienced as more than areas or paths. To the present day, he continues to give certificates to his works, examine their changing “updates” and establish the codes of their presentation. Sometimes not only art history, but also the art business is one long continuum. Here, in Andre’s work, everything comes together and, ultimately, rests in itself.

Carl Andre was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1935. As one of the last great Minimalists, he continues to hold on to the semi-mathematical-rational, semi-theatrical spirit of departure prevalent of the 1960s.