24 Waterbody is from a group of works by Carl Andre that were placed in the east pool of The Museum of Modern Art's Sculpture Garden in one of the museum's Projects exhibitions devoted to work by contemporary artists. 24 Waterbody consists of small pieces of metal scavenged by the artist from the streets of New York. The individual units are similar in configuration to units employed by Andre in previous work--squares, rectangles, lines. Like units are grouped into individual works, with the arrangements of the units being the simplest possible suggested by the materials and the place.

Although these found units are considerably smaller than much of Andre's earlier work, they are not necessarily diminished in scale. Andre has said:

"I have come to the conclusion that perhaps the only single
thing that art has is scale--something which has nothing at
all to do with size. It has to do with things being internally consistent with their own parts"

The problems posed with respect to scale by small units are demanding, according to Andre, as the artist cannot "hide behind size" to realize greatness of scale.