.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
After studying at Central St. Martin’s School of Art in London, Jan Dibbets actively abandoned the medium of painting and appropriated more contemporary practices including video and photography. In doing so, Dibbets did not wish to document reality in the straightforward way in which these mediums are mostly associated with, nor did he 'declare reality to be art, but [he made] art into an independent phenomenon through which the reality of experience was transported to the reality of consciousness' (W. Beeren, Actie, werkelijkheid en fictie in de kunst van de jaren '60 in Nederland, exh. cat., Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam 1979, quoted in: A. de Visser, De tweede helft gedocumenteerd, Amsterdam 2002, p.347). For Dibbets a photograph is not the final product and not an independent work of art, but rather a medium through which art can be created.
In 1969 Dibbets started his Perspective Corrections series, a body of work in which he explored and experimented with the illusory effects that could be created using a camera. He created these illusions himself, by drawing a trapezoid on his studio wall and taking the picture from an angle that makes the viewer see it as a square on the flat plane of the physical photograph instead of seeing it as a trapezoid lying on the floor. The present and next lot were created by Dibbets in 2004, both part of a new series based on the 1969 Perspective Corrections, but this time aptly titled Perspective Collections. For this series Dibbets used artworks from his own private collection. He selected works by fellow artists including Robert Ryman, Carl Andre, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt and Robert Goldman and photographed them in his Amsterdam studio with trapezoids inscribed upon them with string. The series, consisting of ten large-scale photographs, can be seen as a documentation and tribute to the minimal and conceptual art in Europe and the US. These ten large scale photographs arguably encapsulate the core of Dibbets’ practice where the medium he works in comes together with the context with which he has always been associated. Although Dibbets’ work is often mentioned in association with Conceptual and Minimal Art, he actively opposes this reference, arguing that for him the idea behind a piece is never more important than its implementation.
In 1969 Dibbets started his Perspective Corrections series, a body of work in which he explored and experimented with the illusory effects that could be created using a camera. He created these illusions himself, by drawing a trapezoid on his studio wall and taking the picture from an angle that makes the viewer see it as a square on the flat plane of the physical photograph instead of seeing it as a trapezoid lying on the floor. The present and next lot were created by Dibbets in 2004, both part of a new series based on the 1969 Perspective Corrections, but this time aptly titled Perspective Collections. For this series Dibbets used artworks from his own private collection. He selected works by fellow artists including Robert Ryman, Carl Andre, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt and Robert Goldman and photographed them in his Amsterdam studio with trapezoids inscribed upon them with string. The series, consisting of ten large-scale photographs, can be seen as a documentation and tribute to the minimal and conceptual art in Europe and the US. These ten large scale photographs arguably encapsulate the core of Dibbets’ practice where the medium he works in comes together with the context with which he has always been associated. Although Dibbets’ work is often mentioned in association with Conceptual and Minimal Art, he actively opposes this reference, arguing that for him the idea behind a piece is never more important than its implementation.