American sculptor. He studied at Yale University, New Haven, CT, from 1962 to 1966, and completed his MFA in 1969 at the Yale School of Art and Architecture. As an undergraduate he was interested in philosophy and also had a keen interest in the literature generated around Minimalism. In 1966 he created his first linear sculpture, creating a rectangular outline from wire. He recognized this as a possible way to make an object that was weightless and transparent. Seeking to work against the convention of sculpture as a volume enclosed by a surface, he used linear outlines to create a spatial form of sculpture that dispensed with the notion of an interior. He went on to create work that exists in an interdependent relationship with the architecture in which it is installed, such as Untitled (1976; see 1981 exh. cat., p. 70), which links together floor and ceiling. In the early 1970s he began using coloured yarn for its almost imperceptible quality, creating his work intuitively within given spaces. Although he used straight lines to create the abstract shapes in three dimensions, the works were concerned not with geometrical ideas but with the assertion of an impression of volume and materiality. Using very slight means, with the single extended piece of yarn in Untitled (1989; see 1989 exh. cat., p. 28), his work can re-articulate an exhibition space. Other works are closer to the spirit of Minimal art, as in the case of Untitled (1989; see 1989 exh. cat., pp. 18–19), which describes a rhomboid shape that seems to lean against a wall.
Francis Summers
From Grove Art Online
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