Six Geometric Figures

Sol Lewitt’s ‘Six Geometric Figures’ is housed in a room with two doors that stand opposite each other, a white ceiling where in there middle, it holds two sets of three lights, and a plain grey floor which visitors can walk across without any rope or guidelines that refrain a closeness to the artwork

Singular white lines string themselves down the surface of black walls. They create a continual rhythm throughout the room. The lines stretch from the top of the wall, right down to the very bottom where they meet the grey floor of the gallery.
Each white line, not even two centimetres thick possibly measure a tenth of the black spaces that lie in-between. The white lines highlight the black spaces, which are an inch in thickness.

----------------------------------------------------------

Structure

The intensity and the closeness of the opposing black and white lines accentuate each other’s boldness. In one instance they can blur with the minute movements of the eye, yet, at the same time, their vibrancy bounces off of each other so that they become visually loud, noisy and disturbing.
There is a simple structure –purely lines, a seemingly a quiet rhythm. After a time one is disillusioned by the confusion of the lines and there is a strong want to leave the room.
Within the structure lie connotations of jail bars, reinforced by the black and white colours often found within the stereotypical prisoners uniform depicted in old movies or cartoons. Perhaps within these four gallery walls, just as with the notion of a prison there is a feeling of entrapment, and loss of control through the confusion of lines. Where does something begin and where does it end?

Black and white

‘Black marks on a white background’. Words or pieces of text depicted in many languages, read or written, seen in black on white. Especially within western cultures.
The contrast of black ink on a white page makes it easier for us to read what has been written. Without employing colour, words maintain simplicity in the way they are read. ‘Not everything is in black and white’ in this way of cliché and popular thinking, black and white refer in some way to a straightforward way of thinking,
It seems only natural then that Lewitt would construct ‘Six Geometric Figures’ using black and white vertical lines to exaggerate a kind of simplicity or order in structure, usually hiding behind a bigger picture.

There is something else too that comes to mind while stood among the black and white lines, the positives and negatives of reactions between each stretch of colour.
The reminiscence of black and white striped objects such as with the jail bar uniforms of prisoners.

-----------------------------------------------
A Material Past
Stood, facing towards the left wall, I listened as people made their way through the room. A young boy passed through with his father, ‘Is it chalk’ asked the boy. The father puzzled for a second, replied ‘yes, I think it is, like chalk on blackboard’.
Until that moment I myself had not paid attention to the substance of the white lines. Although this could be classed as my own misfortune, it can also be an example of how we become so overwhelmed by an array of information that we neglect other qualities within an artwork.
When looking closely, one can see the rough edges of the white chalk and the course blackness of the wall behind, the same texture as a blackboard.

Chalk on blackboard transports ones thoughts back to early school, a teachers writing on the board, the smudges of chalk left behind from the board rubber and the impressions left from past words.

-------------------------------------------------------

Shapes

Six shapes each similar in their visual volume, are placed around the four walls of the room, lined in a row each starting and ending the same distance of around a meter from the floor and the ceiling.
As soon as each vertical black and white line meets the edge of a shape they stop. Instead the shapes depict the same black and white lines but in a horizontal fashion
Starting from the right wall and working anticlockwise, the shapes displayed include:
A square
A circle
A trapezium
A quadrilateral
A rectangle
And a Triangle

http://softsurfer.com/Archive/algorithm_0101/algorithm_0101.htm


As each slightly changes with the space it occupies so does the area around it. The way in which the vertical lines hit each shape means that each point at which they meet changes in degrees. For example, the shape of the quadrilateral shapes and the square appear to echo the black and white lines; the circle appears to bounce them and the triangle seems to reflect them.

-------------------------------------
Pattern

Retained within the rhythm created by the lines, vertical outside of the shapes and horizontal within, there lies a pattern.
Pattern lies within maths and in nature. It derives from order, from structure. It remains visible through a repetitive action and reoccurring images such as musical notes or geometric shapes.
The symmetries within each shape hold their own kind of patterns; they each have a concise origin. There making holds a pattern, a history of knowledge.
Patterns can also explain a kind of instruction. Where, an object is described by a ‘pattern’. A history gives substance and order to its existence and explains its consequences. A pattern is usually predictable.
The variables of the shapes are further emphasised by the pattern of repetitive black and white lines. Their forms rely on ordered numbers that originate from maths.

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Maths

http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/eventseducation/schools/pdfs/Sol_Lewitt_Maths_Worksheet.pdf

The construction of a geometric shape relies heavily on the application of maths and just the word ‘Geometric’ in the title ‘Six Geometric Figures’ refers to a mathematical discipline.
Mathematics has its roots in science and philosophy. Its equations and formulas found in patterns in nature such as the Fibonacci numbers.

Lewitt's drawing relies heavily on a structure and so maths becomes a key factor to the whole work and not just the shapes that he chooses to embed within the lined walls. Not only s the influence of Maths extremely strong in the completed construct of ‘Six Geometric Figures’ but also in the process where by Lewitt employed a group of Mathematicians to render the drawing.
‘Six Geometric Figures’ is part of a set of ‘Wall Drawings’ that Lewitt made in 1980 and 1981.
As a reproduction of the original, rendered by a group of mathematicians and not the artist; ‘Six Geometric Figures’ begs the question of originality. It also brings to light how maths is possibly one of the most stable forms of reproduction.
------------------------------------------------------------

On entering the room it is as if entering into a green glow. The Dan Flavin luminescent pieces in the room beyond provide a strange lighting that creep into Lewitt’s drawing. This combined with the walk into the room from the darkness of Anri Sala’s video installation ‘Dammi I Colori’ creates a strange lapse in time.

Sat on the floor, in the middle of the four walls of ‘Six Geometric Figures’ it is like being transported to an earlier age of blackboards, ruled pages and to simplified way of looking. Paradoxically, after a few minutes, simplicity recedes with a dizzied head and blurry eyes and the artwork becomes much more. The displayed shapes almost form a storyboard, a progression, they are like the hieroglyphics found in dark caves, or ancient wall drawings but in a most contemporary illustration.