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Carl Andre
Between Sculpture and Poetry
Carl Andre (1935－2024) is one of the best-known sculptors of the Minimal Art movement, which emerged chiefly in the United States in the late 1960s. Between Sculpture and Poetry is Andre’s first solo exhibition in a Japanese museum. It makes full of use of its spacious venue to showcase Andre’s well-known sculptures made of blocks of wood, plates of metal, and slabs of stone processed to the same size and shape and placed in regular arrangements directly on the floor. In light of the way they act on the space in which they are installed, the artist describes these works using the term “sculpture as place.”
To view these sculptures in person reveals details that bely the regimented, inorganic impression they make: the way the metal gleams or rusts, the grain of the wood, the heft of the stone—the composed self-possession of matter itself. It also becomes apparent that not all of the units share the exact same size or shape.
Between Sculpture and Poetry also includes a selection of Andre’s poetry, which is evaluated highly by those familiar with it. Andre creates his poems by typing verbal fragments on a typewriter, and the results can be appreciated both as literature and as visual arrangements. Along with the spatial and structural awareness also evident in Andre’s sculpture, they reflect his thinking in a wide range of fields, including literature, art, history, and politics.
