Untitled

Do you think you play a role in this installation? Robert Morris certainly thinks you do. Morris earned his master’s degree in art history from Hunter College in New York, and in fact studied Asian art under Ad Reinhardt. While writing his thesis, he also penned a series of influential articles for Artforum magazine titled Notes on Sculpture. In these articles, Morris asserted that sculptures should produce “strong Gestalt sensations,” which means that together, the viewer and the elements of the sculpture create a unified structure.

As you walk around these four cubes covered in Plexiglas mirrors, Morris’s assertion begins to come together. The reflections you see are continuously changing—you might catch glimpses of wood floors, white walls, and fragments of faces and bodies. These complex interactions between the mirrored cubes, the gallery’s environment and you as the viewer can only be fully realised when you engage with the work over a period of time. In other words, you play an active role in producing the gestalt.

Morris made a few versions of this work, varying the materials each time. What remained constant, however, was the critical role of the viewer as well as the environment surrounding the work. While the distance between the cubes could change depending on the size of the room, Morris insisted that there must always be enough space to walk between the cubes.