DUSSELDORF.- On the occasion of the first anniversary of Carl Andre's passing, Konrad Fischer Galerie takes the opportunity to remember the artist and his significant oeuvre with a comprehensive memorial exhibition.
In October 1967, Dorothee and Konrad Fischer opened their gallery space in Düsseldorf, known as Ausstellungen bei Konrad Fischer. The very first artist they showcased was the New York-based sculptor Carl Andre, presenting his inaugural European solo exhibition. He arranged 100 steel plates, each measuring 50 x 50 cm, to form an elongated rectangle: the 5 x 20 Altstadt Rectangle, which occupied the entire gallery space, forcing visitors to enter the work—an innovative experience at that time.
Andre fundamentally changed the way we perceive sculpture. He developed his floor sculptures on-site using industrial materials such as metal, wood, and stone. „I am not a studio artist; I am a location artist.“
The artistic intervention consists of a serial arrangement of materials within a single location, without altering the materials themselves. By integrating the surrounding space, the sculpture transforms into a space itself—Sculpture as Place.
Today, Konrad Fischer Galerie is looking back on more than 50 years of intensive collaboration and heartfelt friendship with Carl Andre, a bond that continues after his death through his Estate. January 2025 marks the first anniversary of his passing, and we would like to honor him with this exhibition. The show includes works created over five decades and offers insight into the variety of materials used, such as wood, steel, dolomite, graphite, basalt, and Belgian Blue Limestone.
Carl Andre's Poems have occupied a crucial place in his oeuvre since the 1950s. The exhibition features some of the typewritten ones from the 1970s. Here, too, the individual words enter into specific spatial relationships with one another and with the viewer.
Andre's work has been shown in numerous important solo and group exhibitions, most recently in 2024 at the Kawamura Memorial Dic Museum of Art, Sakura/Japan, 2023 at Umi Hall Daegu Art Museum in Daegu, Korea and in a comprehensive retrospective at Dia:Beacon at Beacon, NY (2014-2016), which was also shown at the Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid, the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. His works can be found in public collections such as the Dia Art Foundation in New York, the MoMA Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Tate Modern, London, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris and the Museum Ludwig, Cologne.
