Dimensions: object: 114 x 222 x 51 mm
Copyright: The Work of Naum Gabo © Nina & Graham Williams/Tate, London 2014 | CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED, Photo: Tate
Curator: Naum Gabo, born in Russia in 1890, presents here his "Model for 'Double Relief in a Niche'". It's currently housed at the Tate. Editor: It strikes me as a stage, maybe for a play about…mechanization. I’m getting a quiet, unsettling feeling from the geometry. Curator: Gabo's work is so often about space and modernism, about breaking down barriers – both physical and ideological. Note the industrial materials and how the shapes interact. It challenges traditional notions of sculpture. Editor: And what could the niche represent? Is it a sanctuary or a cage? The symbolism feels ambiguous. Curator: Perhaps the niche is not a confinement, but a designated space for the future to unfold, to question what is art and what is its function. Editor: A provocative, open-ended question indeed. Thank you for your insights. Curator: My pleasure. This construction really makes us question our place in the modern world.
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http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/gabo-model-for-double-relief-in-a-niche-t02170
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This model was made for a relief commissioned by the architect Eric Mendelsohn for his Berlin home in 1929. The relief was abandoned because the curved glasswork was too expensive. A drawing shows that it would have been three or four feet high, set into a wall above a sofa. The white plastic in the model represents the wall. The different forms and materials suggest the variety of ways in which Gabo sought to animate the internal space of the niche. Gallery label, August 2004
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