Untitled (Farbraumkörper) 1978

This ‘color-space-body’, made by Gotthard Graubner, is a canvas stretched over foam padding, then covered in thin layers of paint. It's not exactly sculpture, but not painting either. The magic here is how the material affects what we see. Graubner lets the inherent qualities of the paint express themselves. Notice how the paint seems to float on the surface? This is because the underlying foam gives the canvas a yielding quality, allowing him to work the pigment almost as if he was modelling clay. Graubner has also used simple tools and techniques. There’s no virtuoso brushwork here; instead, there is a painstaking build-up of thin layers, each subtly different. The color is more breathed on than applied. It takes a great deal of labor to achieve this kind of effortless quality. Ultimately, it’s the artist’s sensitivity to materials and process that gives this work its depth. Graubner collapses the distinction between painting and sculpture by focusing on the way materials inform our experience.