The present exhibition shows sculptures and works on paper dating from 1967. The works on paper share a speculative and documentary relationship with his sculptural work. From the very beginning of his artistic career Fred Sandback created multipart vertical sculptures. For instance, Untitled (Sculptural Study, seven-part Vertical Construction). The freestanding sculpture Untitled Mikado placed in the centre of the ground floor gallery is surrounded by four columns. This Mikado (pick-up sticks) construction refers to a sculpture proposed for Lannan Foundation in Santa Fe, New Mexico where the artist had a solo exhibition in 1999.

Sandback’s delicate line structures sculpt space by handling the acrylic yarn as the ‘sculptural equivalent of a N° 2 pencil’. He introduces simplicity, lightness and precision in his work. Sandback’s line is both an outline of a geometrical shape and a virtual cutting line that influences existing spatial proportions and defines new spatial possibilities. It embodies the continuous interplay between presence and absence, form and volume, tension and harmony.

Although his work can be related to the Minimal Art movement, relationships are not as simple or direct as it may appear. The sculptures emphasise the immateriality of the pictorial means, rather than their objective character. Furthermore these minimal structures are maximal in spatial implications.