Horror vacui

“Horror vacui,” or “fear of empty spaces,” is a term often used to describe outsider art, where every square inch of surface is filled with details and data in a compulsive excess of activity—perhaps in fear of that blank space that might stare back. In opposing the void, every particle is given form. The group exhibition Horror vacui proposes Op art as a side effect of this embattled triage of hand, eye, and mind, where mark making is a means with which to fill space with optically rich results.

As an antidote to aesthetic gratification, Marcel Duchamp invented the Rotoreliefs in 1923. By satisfying the retina itself, they mesmerized the eye with gyrating spirals. The result was a hypnotic visual white noise as well as a false sense of depth or vortex. Duchamp enlisted his product in an inventors’ fair, sure that this would reveal its niche market demographic. Not a single Rotorelief sold.

A vacuum neutralized of the burdens of detail, the white cube has long been considered an unencumbered and timeless context for viewing art. Urs Fischer’s playful wallpaper imitates the appearance of raw sheetrock, an odd moment of past-life mimesis for the walls in a room that now communicates the sensation of an indeterminate space. The corners of rooms are where planes converge and space is rendered functionally useless and thus often ignored, yet Joel Morrison’s shiny stainless-steel corner piece converts this uselessness into a glaringly prominent strength, just as Rachel Whiteread uses the entire space itself as a sculptural material.

The hours spent applying and reapplying a totality of marks are evident in the dense graphite drawings of Nancy Rubins. Torn papers are rubbed vigorously with graphite so as to appear burnished like dull, dark metal. Made by scribbling onto the paper contained inside of his pocket with a pencil cramped in his hand, William Anastasi’s Pocket Drawings act as a diaristic account of this space within everyday attire as an active site of mark making. The late Roman Opalka spent a lifetime documenting time and space by painstakingly counting toward infinity. His works on paper entitled Cartes de Voyage demonstrate his conviction, done outside the studio out of necessity.