Weisse Struktur (Spiegelung) 1960

Gerhard von Graevenitz made this piece titled ‘Weisse Struktur (Spiegelung)’, using who knows what material, probably sometime in the 60’s. The off-white surface, punctuated by this field of dimples, immediately sets up a push-pull of intention and accident, and makes me think of the process as something almost scientific. Looking closer at the texture, I can feel that each tiny indentation is like a pixel in a larger image, a kind of data point. Some are grouped, others isolated, but each one feels deliberate yet also a little random, like the artist has created a code or a map, but for what? I guess it's a reflection, so maybe he's trying to show how an image can be distorted or abstracted. Graevenitz was interested in the idea of chance and order, and I see this echoed in the work of someone like John Cage, who used similar strategies in his music. ‘Weisse Struktur’ invites us to see the world as a collection of patterns and possibilities, rather than fixed meanings.