Dia:Beacon Field Trip

I really liked the sculptures of Michael Heizer, which were "negative sculptures" that explored negative space, or the absence of a piece rather than it's presence. His pieces were holes in the ground cut in different shapes: a cylinder, rectangular solid, cone, and cube. They showed a very alternate, original view of sculpture.
Fritz Sandback's works were very deceptively simple. They were colored strings attached to the walls and floors in different areas. they created visual barriers simply by outlining with string, a rectangle, or triangle, or other shape. It gave a strong impression that there was a sheet of glass there, that you were compelled to avoid.
Sol LeWitt's mathematically precise drawings left me speechless as they looked as if they had been drawn directly on the wall, by pencil, by hand. The size of them, the time they must have taken, and the care with which they were done was inconceivable to me. When you stand back from them, you can hardly see the lines, but up close it is all too clear. When he combined them with huge circles, the sense of visual motion increases. When he uses more organic lines repeated, the whole wall literally comes to life. The effect in one work appeared as an intricate wood grain, and in another, as an ant's-eye view, at ground level, of a field of grass.
John Chamberlain made one of my favorite pieces of the day. He is an assemblage artist who uses car parts. His "Privet Hedge" consisted of a long row of twisting, metal, 10 foot tall spears. They were colored in many bright colors and patterns-often re-creating tie-dye effects.
The size of the piece made you want to stand back to take it all in, but the attention to detail, and the variety in the colors and patterns made you want to come in close to study each spear.
One of the last artists I saw, was Richard Serra's huge metal sculptures that look like smokestacks on ships. The room they are in is chilly, and the large shapes crowd into it. You can walk into them, and explore their interior. In one, you walk around a circular maze, with the walls leaning in towards you, making it a bit claustrophobic.