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Immaterial: Brancusi, Gabo, Moholy - Nagy

Published to accompany the exhibition Immaterial: Brancusi, Gabo, Moholy-Nagy in 2004.

The dematerialisation of the solid world has been a pre-occupation of Western artists from Impressionism, through Cubism to the present day. Immaterial explored the aspiration of three modernist artists of Eastern European origins, Constantin Brancusi, Naum Gabo and László Moholy-Nagy, to ‘dematerialise’ the sculptural object.

In their various ways these artists sought to replace mass and weight by light, space, time: Gabo and Moholy-Nagy through the use of new materials and movement; Brancusi through reflective surfaces, the sense of vertical leap and rotating bases.

Immaterial encompassed include sculpture, graphic works, photographs, photograms and film, looking in particular at the interplay between sculpture and photography, going back to the photographic portrayal of Rodin’s sculptures which sometimes take on the air of 19th century ‘spirit’ photography.