Container 1989

Jean-Pierre Raynaud made this sculpture ‘Container’, and it really makes you think, doesn’t it? There's a sense of something medical, something sterile, maybe even something a little bit disturbing about the geometric shapes. What hits you first is the intensity of the materials. We have this very hard, flat white surface broken up by an almost aggressively applied black grid. It's very precise, almost clinical, and the grid-like pattern seems to go on forever, creating a sense of endless space. The first aid cross in this context feels almost too simplistic, too easy an answer to this intense grid like pattern that seems to want to go on forever. When I look at this, I think of Agnes Martin’s grids and the way that they suggest an opening onto an expanded consciousness. But where Martin is very gentle and meditative, Raynaud goes in a different direction, creating something much more claustrophobic. It makes me think about the way artists are constantly in dialogue with each other, referencing and subverting each other’s ideas. Art is never one thing, it’s always a conversation.