Construction in Space with Crystalline Centre 1940

Naum Gabo made this sculpture, Construction in Space with Crystalline Centre, and used clear plastic to do it. The amazing thing about this piece is that it’s a sculpture, but it's also kind of not there; it’s about space, and what happens in space. Gabo is not using mass, instead he uses line. When you look closely, it's easy to see how the sheets of plastic bend the light; even the way they are joined together, the glue marks or whatever, create their own kind of texture. If you move around, the way it looks changes completely. That little square in the middle, that crystalline centre, is like a little world, a whole sculpture in itself. The way it hangs there, suspended, makes me think of Brancusi, but where Brancusi is all about smoothness, Gabo is showing us the raw edges. Art is all about seeing things in new ways, and Gabo really does that for me here.