Displacements 1-6

Dóra Maurer

1976 · Gouache on paper, six sheets · Modern and Contemporary Art

Optics, mathematics, and planar geometry play an important role in Maurer’s practice as do serial-and rule-based procedures. Each sheet of gridded paper in this work features eight nested rectangles crossed by diagonal lines. The interior and exterior borders of the rectangles are painted in contrasting colors. In the first sheet, the nested rectangles occupy four equal quadrants. In the remaining sheets, Maurer systematically displaces the rectangles twice over. As the rectangles move up, down, and across the grid, not unlike chess pieces on a chess board, their lines cross in ever more dramatic ways, eventually creating a formal and chromatic tangle in the center of the sheet. By the sixth sheet, order has succumbed to relative chaos.

Artist

Dóra Maurer

Date

1976

Medium

Gouache on paper, six sheets

Department

Modern and Contemporary Art

Credit line

Purchase, Bequest of Gioconda King, by exchange, 2019