The upcoming exhibition’s title includes brackets that allude to at least three machinations of the artwork it includes. First, the square brackets resemble the space-holder artworks in the exhibition. Second, the brackets inject a separate commentary aside from the mainstream commentary that excludes actual space in art. Third, the square brackets emphasise the act of bracketing a space as separate from the same space outside the brackets. 

The first of these machinations will require the artworks themselves to verify once the exhibition opens.

As for the second, to discuss space as an art object has proven fraught, from the outset, for a few reasons. The minimalist Donald Judd, for whom thought creates space, named two: space is invisible and real space in art is without history.

The first reason is obvious enough to understand. Space is invisible, and if visual art is not visible, how can we see to discuss it? How can we, in terms of Facebook and its increasing grip on status, ‘Like’ it? This inability of space is symptomatic of a hurdle hard to clear. 

The second reason, a lack of history, is a hurdle already jumped. Donald Judd’s art, since 1962, begins this history — for me, at least. Albeit a history little known.

The third reason is more difficult. Space, as an art object, is an oxymoron. Art students learn to distinguish positive space from negative space early in their studies. Such lessons treat positive space as a physical object, and negative space as the non-physicality surrounding it. A space-object therefore makes nonsense of this positive/negative distinction. How, therefore, can we come to terms with a material space in art when we deploy similar terms that obscure the distinction we now need to see?

This is where the third machination of the title [space holder] — the act of bracketing space — helps. 

If we take, for example, a scenario of queueing somewhere, say, in a supermarket, when we realise we have forgotten something we need to fetch; it is not uncommon to turn to the person behind to ask if they wouldn’t mind saving our space. By saving our space, we are asking them to hold it for our return.

In this simple act, a stranger undertakes a social contract when they vow to keep our claim on a space. Another’s recognition bounds the held space, albeit invisible to others milling about close-by.

The space is concrete through a stranger’s validation. It is intersubjective through an arrangement between two people. And is actual as a public social space, not a figment of one’s imagination. 

Yet how does a space in a queue held by another transpire as a space-object in art?  

A stranger’s corroboration confirms the held space as something with material existence. By becoming a space-thing that at least two people share through agreed understanding, the held-space is no longer subjective but objective. By becoming objective, the held-space becomes verifiable as an entity and attains solidity, unlike space per se. 

To become a solid-space in art, recognition has therefore to activate it, to place it in square brackets. But, again, how — or whose?

When we turn to a stranger in a queue, we are, in fact, turning to ourselves in the guise of another’s position. For if we cannot oblige a stranger when they ask us to hold their space in line, we are not in a position to ask a stranger to oblige our own request.

As the philosopher Hegel tells us, ‘Pure self-recognition in absolute otherness, this Aether as such, is the ground and soil of Science or knowledge in general. The beginning of philosophy presupposes or requires that consciousness should dwell in this element. But this element itself achieves its own perfection and transparency only through the movement of its becoming.’: (G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V. Miller, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1977, p. 14))

Still not convinced that a corroborated space — a mutual space — is a material space in art through recognition? Then ask yourself this. Next time you are nearing the front of a long supermarket queue and realise you have forgotten one vital thing you need to fetch; will you stand your ground and insist this new understanding of actual space is unwarranted? Or will you turn to the stranger behind and ask if they wouldn’t mind holding your space in line?