
Using subtle methods and an economy of materials, Fred Sandback’s work creates striking perceptual effects in response to the surrounding architecture. Sandback traced the space between different points on floors, ceilings, and walls, creating shapes and constructing the illusion of a pane of glass or shimmering lines of color. A long-term installation of several of Sandback’s yarn works from Dia’s collection returns to the galleries in winter 2021.


Fred Sandback (1943-2003) was an American artist known for sculptures that outlined planes and volumes in space. Though he employed metal wire and elastic cord early in his career, the artist soon dispensed with mass and weight by using acrylic yarn to create works that address their physical surroundings, the “pedestrian space,” as Sandback called it, of everyday life. By stretching lengths of yarn horizontally, vertically, or diagonally at different scales and in varied configurations, the artist developed a singular body of work that elaborated on the phenomenological experience of space and volume with unwavering consistency and ingenuity.




DIA Beacon is a renowned contemporary art museum situated in Beacon, New York, on the banks of the Hudson River. Housed in a repurposed 1929 Nabisco box printing factory, its expansive galleries and minimalist architecture make it a destination for lovers of postwar art and industrial design.

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