GRID STRUCTURE #1
When Italo Calvino set out to describe his beloved Venice he put his words into the mouth of the traveler Marco Polo to address the great Kublai Khan. Polo does not describe one city, but a multitude, one more fantastic than the other, each with a distinct quality, marking a journey to an ever more complete, but ever incomplete picture of what he wishes to convey. Venice is a conceivably comprehensive, yet infinitely facetted structure suspended self-contained within a lagoon, something it shares with Alois Kronschlaeger's current installation “Grid Structure #1” at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut.
Grid Structure #1, 2014
© Photo by Marc Lins
“Grid Structure #1” is just what the title suggests: a towering structure of stacked gridded cubes, 18 feet high, constructed of 22 cubes, each measuring 2'x2'x2', meticulously assembled of wooden sticks in 9x9x9 subdivisions. Each cube is discreetly constructed and then deconstructed each to its own logic. One is missing four corners, one is missing the a layer - front and back - of its outer 9 by 9 module slice, one has diagonals in a 1:9 inclination, and so on; as if posthumously scripted by Sol Levitt to explore the formal logic and structural versatility of a cube divided into a grid of 9x9x9=729 little cubes.
© Photo by Marc Lins
Four of the 22 cubes have been treated violently and outside of the Cartesian logic by topographical intrusions made of wire mesh that are confronting and interrupting the solemn play of the three-dimensional grid. One is embedded in the center of a cube as a self-contained cloud-shaped formation; one pierces a black silvery hole from one corner to its opposite corner; one cuts a canyon through the diagonal; and one eats away one corner of a cube. These allotropic intrusions introduce a juxtaposition of a different spatial state, one that is more chaotic and yet constructed of wire mesh, which as a material is but metal thread woven into a squared pattern.
© Photo by Marc Lins
A painting is a painting, and a sculpture is a sculpture. Yet, if color is the mark of a painting, “Grid Structure #1” may well be described as a painting. Each side of each of the thin wooden slats that make up the 22 cubes is painted to follow a color logic that defines each cube by itself, as well as the whole structure as a three-dimensional painting. And there are many of these slats: each cube has 300 of them and each slate has 4 sides. Which makes a painting of more than 25,000 discrete surfaces that make up the color environment.
Brâncuși once remarked that “there are idiots who define my work as abstract; yet what they call abstract is what is most realistic. What is real is not the appearance, but the idea, the essence of things." The essence of things in Kronschlaeger’s particular instance is concentrated on the very specific environment where the structure is placed: a circular atrium appendix to the museum with a particular lighting condition and a distinct spatial proportion. As abstract as the artist’s constructive approach may seem, it is in fact a highly site-specific intervention, emphasizing the vertical axis of the existing space, and extending the verticality to the below by placing the work on a black surface that reflects the spatial configuration as a subdued mirage.
© Photo by Marc Lins
The work does not attempt to recreate an “endless column” in imitation of Brâncuși, but the carefully towering grid structure achieves a seemingly endless verticality that exaggerates the existing space. If nothing else, the work masters to make us appreciate the space that surrounds it, which has been a curatorial step child since the opening of the museum.
A most important part, which may not be conceived as part of the work at all, is the black gravel that surrounds the structure and of which a museum note informs the visitor that it is allowed to walk on. “Grid Structure #1” is very photogenic and it is easy to snap a memorable picture from almost any angle, however no photo will actually capture the work in its essence, as it only reveals itself fully as a spatial experience. Each movement of the spectator opens another view of intersecting geometries, of color plains and perspectival discoveries, combining a Brâncușian realism with a spatial specificity.
Matthias Neumann
