Fred Sandback: Sculpture
October 11, 2025–June 21, 2026

“There’s an inherent transience to my work. Many larger pieces may only exist for a few days in a particular place, before being put away indefinitely. They are in principle always able to come into existence again at a future time, but will then be a part of a new situation. If I remake a piece in a new place, it’s a different piece. If I remake a piece in the same place, it’s still bound to be a different piece than before,” Fred Sandback, from “Notes” (Munich: Kunstraum), 1975. 

This October, the Chinati Foundation will remount Fred Sandback: Sculpture, an exhibition Sandback first presented at Chinati from 2001–2002. Consisting of six sculptures made of acrylic yarn and three painted wood reliefs, the exhibition provides visitors with the opportunity to experience Sandback’s work as it was initially conceived, interacting with the architecture of the U-shaped army barrack in which it was installed. The exhibition will remain on view through June 21, 2026.

Fred Sandback (1943–2003) was an established artist when he came to Marfa, well-known for works that explored space, volume, color, and place. Employing remarkably simple means, primarily yarn, Sandback made some of the most elegant, perceptually challenging and intellectually profound sculptures of his generation. In the years since his passing, his work continues to be exhibited internationally and the Fred Sandback Archive was established to support interest in its study.

Sandback reminds us, in the excerpt from “Notes” reprinted above, that every experience is unique, while proposing something more remarkable, that remaking an artwork, even in the same place, changes the piece itself. In Sandback’s conception, remaking constitutes a difference in the piece, despite remaining unchanged in all other regards. Following Sandback’s logic, the re-installation of his work at Chinati in 2025, though faithful in every way to the original, results in something different and new.

Sandback’s sensitivity to context and time is especially germane at Chinati, where so much of the work engages these concerns. For Sandback, context is integral to realization of his art but doesn’t constitute it. And neither does the work attempt to determine, or dominate, its context. In the same “Notes,” he writes, “My work isn’t environmental. It’s present in pedestrian space, but is not so strong or elaborate that it obscures its context. It doesn’t take over a space, but rather coexists with it.” Remounting Fred Sandback: Sculpture at Chinati provides an opportunity to encounter a great artist’s actuality of line, color, shape, and material, in what Sandback once described as his preferred conditions for exhibition, “a strong, immediate, and beautiful situation.”

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About Fred Sandback
Fred Sandback was born in 1943 in Bronxville, New York. After receiving a B. A. in philosophy at Yale University, he studied sculpture at Yale School of Art and Architecture. In 1981, the Dia Art Foundation initiated and maintained a museum of Sandback’s work, the Fred Sandback Museum, in Winchendon, Massachusetts, which was open until 1996. His work is permanently on view at Dia:Beacon. Sandback died in 2003. The Fred Sandback Archive was established in 2007 primarily to create and maintain an archival resource on the art of Fred Sandback.

Acknowledgements
Fred Sandback: Sculpture is made possible with support from the Chadwick/Loher Foundation. Additional support has been provided by the Chinati Foundation’s Board of Trustees and Director’s Circle. Special thanks to the Fred Sandback Archive.