Horizontal Vertical Angle 2 1972 - 1974

Klaus Rinke made this drawing, Horizontal Vertical Angle 2, on paper with graphite. I love the simplicity here, the plainness of a line. Can you imagine Rinke with his pencil, carefully drawing the lines? It’s like he’s trying to find the most reduced, bare-bones way to mark space. The horizontal stretching across, meeting the vertical at a perfect right angle. And that little arrow at the bottom – it's like the drawing is both a map and a measurement. Rinke’s not trying to trick us or show off some fancy skill. Instead, he’s inviting us to consider space and form in the most basic way, the lines defining a shape and the shape defining the space around it. Thinking about Sol LeWitt, Agnes Martin. Artists who were equally interested in simplicity of form. It's a reminder that art can be about exploration and that even in the most restrained gestures, there is a whole world of meaning waiting to be discovered.