Earlier, I neglected to say what led me to make space complex by making epic space.
In an art college art history lecture some twenty years or more after its emergence in North America, I first learned about Minimal art. I was struggling at art college at the time, unable to see the point of making art in a society in pain and requiring attention by trained professionals. Making art, in comparison, seemed like a luxurious lifestyle choice albeit its poverty, one I was disinterested in.
When, however, I learned of Minimal art in the art history lecture, my life changed. Immediately, I could see purpose in becoming an artist. Visual art could play an active role in building better life-paths for others.
Unfortunately, though, Minimal art’s very name let it down. It describes the reduction and simplicity with which commentators treated it. The coinage conceals the 3D work’s spatial complexity when it is this complexity that led me to devote my practice to the development of non-a priori space in art.
In Berlin, in 1998, with a need to draw attention to the complexity of non-a priori space, I made ‘art idea no. 8,582,048’.
As part of the three semiospheres the work comprises, the image above shows four alternate centres for the idea’s lost centre.
A part of the accompanying watercolour reads: The authorities therefore searched for the idea’s missing centre and, in so doing, found four possibilities. The question thus arose: which of the four is the missing one? We, a handful of willing viewers, were asked to decide. The decision, however, has not yet been made for ‘viewers’ are not to touch the art and as the idea is in the other room, we can only compare it to the possibilities via memory. This process is laborious and up until this hour [12.09 Uhr] of this day [Mittwoch 18.11.1998] , our memories have failed.