Tractatus, Curator, David Winton Bell Gallery Brown University, 1999
Vesela Sretenovic Curator, David Winton Bell Gallery Brown University, 1999
The idea for Tractatus developed over a period of almost ten years, as the artist moved from her early practice, fluctuating between minimalist forms and conceptual aims, to social engagement. Tractatus underlines a two-fold conflict, between the cool look of Minimalism and the need to enclose it within a warmer, sensual appeal, and between the functionalism of modernist architecture in the vein of Mies Van der Rohe and the urge to enrich it with corporeal presence. Here we recognize the influence of Joseph Beuys and his belief that art must be simultaneously private and public, striving at once for aesthetic beauty and ethical function, as well as Wittgenstein's claim that ethics and aesthetics should be one and not separate categories.
The idea for Tractatus developed over a period of almost ten years, as the artist moved from her early practice, fluctuating between minimalist forms and conceptual aims, to social engagement. Tractatus underlines a two-fold conflict, between the cool look of Minimalism and the need to enclose it within a warmer, sensual appeal, and between the functionalism of modernist architecture in the vein of Mies Van der Rohe and the urge to enrich it with corporeal presence. Here we recognize the influence of Joseph Beuys and his belief that art must be simultaneously private and public, striving at once for aesthetic beauty and ethical function, as well as Wittgenstein's claim that ethics and aesthetics should be one and not separate categories.