October 2001
Geometrical Affairs
New acquisitions and works from the collection
Sylvie Fleury
John Armleder
Josef Albers
Gottfried HoneggerCamille Graeser
Gail Haistings
Karin Sander
Gail Haistings
Gail Hastings
b.1965/AUSDifficult Art Decisions, 1998
Picture: 3 parts, 100.5 x 100.5 x 9.5 cm; pencil,
water colour: 101.3 x 81 cm;
5 cushions: each 40.5 x 40.5 x 10.5 cm;
1 chair: 61 x 60.5 x 50.5 mGail Hastings examines the theories of historical Minimal Art in her own artistic work. One key innovation introduced by the Minimal movement was its demand that the viewer should take responsibility and participate actively in the perception of art.
Her "Sculptural Situations" work on the basis of this approach to create spaces that address human beings as physical, intellectual and aesthetically capable beings, and wish to involve them. Thus Hastings' works are abstract pictorial compositions extending into the three-dimensional sphere, which can be entered, used and that can accept offers of action.
But Difficult Art Decisions also describes another phenomenon: the failure of Minimalism, which was so concerned with theorizing and creating an aura that it forgot the viewer's point of view and thus lost sight of one of its key aims.