Out of Line
525 West 20th St.
New York, NY 10011 USA
Curatorial Text
MINUS SPACE presents Out of Line, the first pop-up exhibition organized in collaboration with the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros. Out of Line highlights nearly thirty historical works—including painting, drawing, works on paper, and sculpture—by thirteen artists, primarily South American, who spent the greater part of their lives investigating the language of reductive abstraction during one of its most fertile periods, from the late 1940s through the early 1980s.
Beginning with Colombian artist Feliza Bursztyn’s raucous, stainless steel sculpture Sin título (from the series Histéricas) (1967) as our point of departure, we selected art works for this exhibition that possess a kind of human disposition. Although geometric upon first appearance, the works are not platonic by nature and depict virtually no hard dominant shapes, severe right angles, rigorous mathematical patterns, or industrial precision. Rather, works are made gingerly by hand and reflect a range of human qualities and emotions. They can feel optimistic, humorous, heady, intimate, mysterious, and political.
Similar to us as individuals, these art works strongly convey a sense of becoming, rather than being. Their forms are unabashedly animated. They stand, lean, bend, sway, twirl, tremble, and tumble. Brought together into the context of a single exhibition space, they form a vigorous and shifting social dynamic akin to a live stage performance, energetic children’s playground, or bustling subway platform.
Matthew Deleget & Rossana Martínez
Founders/Directors, MINUS SPACE