31 - Sol LeWitt (American, 1928-2007)

Sol LeWitt (American, 1928-2007) Incomplete Open Cube 6/14 - 1974 Aluminum and enamel painting 105 x 105 x 105 cm Provenance: Galerie Vega, Liège (1974) The Robert and Suzanne Pannier Collection, Bruges Published: Katrien Blanchaert, Louis De Mey, Laura Hanssens, Time Extended / 1964-1978: Works and Documents from the Herbert Foundation. Part III, Ghent, 2018 (ill.) Literature: Sol LeWitt. Incomplete Open Cubes, art & project, Bulletin 88, Amsterdam, 1975 Exhibited: Galerie Vega, Liège, Sol Lewitt, December 1974 Herbert Foundation, Ghent, Time Extended III, 30 September 2018 - 2 June 2019 (ill.) With a photocertificate of authenticity by the artist, dated May 17, 1974. The Incomplete Open Cubes occupy a central position within Sol LeWitt’s exploration of the cube as a primary unit of sculptural thought. Developed from 1974 onwards, the series extends his systematic investigation into permutation structures, in which a simple geometric form is subjected to logically determined variations. The cube is not treated as a fixed volume, but as a field of potential configurations governed by predetermined rules, in which form is not composed but derived. The possible variations are organised according to the number of edges retained from the twelve edges of a complete cube. Beginning with the minimum number of elements required to suggest a three-dimensional structure and progressing towards the complete cube minus one edge, each subset generates a different number of possible configurations. The present Incomplete Open Cube 6/14 is the fourteenth variation within the group of structures composed of six elements. Fabricated in aluminium and painted in enamel, the work presents an open linear structure in which absence is as significant as presence. Rather than defining a solid volume, LeWitt’s sculpture activates the surrounding space through edge, interval and direction. The geometry remains immediately legible, yet its incompleteness introduces a perceptual tension: the viewer instinctively reconstructs the absent cube while simultaneously confronting the limits of that reconstruction.