Wall Drawing #1136 2004

Curator: What strikes me immediately about this is how playful it is. All those rainbow colors wriggling across the wall, and then set against those stern, upright stripes... It feels so optimistic and cheerful! Editor: This is "Wall Drawing #1136" by Sol LeWitt, completed in 2004. LeWitt was a key figure in both Conceptual Art and Minimalism, and here he combines precise geometry with the spontaneity of a hand-drawn line in a large-scale mural. And indeed the piece does generate such dynamic engagement! The mural consists of both straight and wavy colorful lines that move together throughout the work. Do you think the placement of these forms means something? Curator: Placement… well, you know, with LeWitt, it's all about the idea, isn't it? I see the instructions like a little poem, passed on and interpreted each time. It doesn't belong to the wall in the conventional sense; instead it responds, it dances around and inside it... it's more organic than inorganic, the work grows with the support itself... What's more, the instructions may be completed at another gallery if it is purchased. It does give me that sense of community and free spirit I've learned to find at street festivals or political rallies. Editor: Exactly, and thinking about that freedom in relation to form, the wavy lines here are incredibly generative, a concept that brings to mind Deleuze's idea of the rhizome: a horizontal stem with shoots sprouting out where possibilities arise at any point. Does that inform our discussion on Conceptual art too? Curator: Maybe. Thinking about it more abstractly I keep going back to music - like a kind of colorful musical notation. The stripes are like a steady bass line while that serpentine figure dances through and above. There's so much structure here with a hint of a jam session to happen at any moment. Editor: And it’s intriguing how the cool, detached aesthetic of Minimalism merges here with what can feel so emotionally evocative. But LeWitt never seemed interested in "expressing" his feelings through art in any conventional way. Rather, he wanted to foreground the idea itself. A system he created. How the execution is merely the material actualization of that concept. And what do we know of "concept" and system, but an idealist way of reasoning through art-making in itself, isn't it? Curator: In any case, I would simply conclude it does not need all this grandiosity to prove itself. Ultimately, looking at the artwork, I'm feeling both structure and escape... a neat trick, indeed! Editor: A lovely tension to sit with, absolutely. The vibrant structure provides stability to launch a whimsicality and delight!