26 - Sol LeWitt (American, 1928- 2007)

Sol LeWitt (American, 1928- 2007) Cube Structure Based on Five Modules - 1973 Painted wood 62 x 62 x 62 cm Provenance: Galerie Charles Kriwin, Brussels (1973) The Robert and Suzanne Pannier Collection, Bruges Published: André Gordts, Beelden voor heden [exhibition catalog], De Ronde Tafel, Kortrijk, 1985, pp.50-51 (ill.) Exhibited: Bank Brussel Lambert, Kortrijk, Beelden voor heden, 26 May - 15 June 1985, p.51 (ill.) With a photocertificate by the artist. Executed in 1973, Cube Structure Based on Five Modules belongs to the body of structures through which Sol LeWitt made the open cube a fundamental element of his sculptural vocabulary. Reduced to its essential framework of edges, each module encloses space rather than mass. The present structure is built from five superimposed layers whose arrangement follows a simple governing principle: each successive level contains fewer modules than the one beneath it, generating a form whose complexity arises entirely from the repetition and distribution of these elements. The sculpture possesses no single privileged viewpoint. As the work is viewed from different angles, its transparent structure continually shifts between density and openness, allowing the mind to perceive larger cubic volumes that are defined as much by absence as by the structure itself. "The most interesting characteristic of the cube," LeWitt observed, "is that it is relatively uninteresting." Cube Structure Based on Five Modules demonstrates the insight behind that seemingly paradoxical remark. Through the repetition of a single, elementary unit, the work transforms the simplest of geometric forms into an endlessly changing experience of proportion, rhythm, and space.