Charles Ginnever

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	Charles Ginnever
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<p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Your browser is not capable of displaying inline frames. </p><p>In order to see this page correctly you will need to <br /> upgrade your browser to a later version <br /> of Internet Explorer. </p><p><a href="http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/default.asp">Download update here</a>.</p>	Early Works 1955 - 1965 To home page

Calligraph & Ithaca, completed in 1958/59 were key large works made with railroad ties and structural steel. They deconstructed and re-defined the abstract sculptural space Ginnevers works were to occupy thereafter, and were the result of an instinctive Eastern, as opposed to a Western visual bias. (Arata Isosaki, MA: Space Time in Japan,1979)**

Working out of a top floor loft on the corner of Greene and Houston streets in New York during the 1960s, he and other artists continued to expand the syntax for sculpture through the elimination of the base, the free use of found materials and color, plus Sculpture Dance performances staged by Ergo Suits, the artists carnival he organized and produced at Woodstock and Bridgehampton, New York in 1962.

The seminal work Dantes Rig of 1964 brought an end to the use of found materials in favor of manufactured components for a pared down approach to expressing new ideas concerning the complexities of space beyond the dogma of Minimalism.

** According to Western notions, space is three-dimensional and a four-dimensional world results from the addition of the time element to the spatial dimensions. In Japanese thought, however, space is composed of strictly two-dimensional facets. In other words, in Japan four-dimensional space is visualized as the result of combining two two-dimensional facets and two time measurements.
The unique spatial perception of the Japanese has created a particularized sense of daily life, as well as forms of artistic expression that differ fundamentally from those of Western civilization. While in the West the space-time concept gave rise to absolutely fixed images of a homogenous and fixed continuum, as presented by Descartes, in Japan space and time were never fully separated but were conceived as correlative and omnipresent.
(Arata Isosaki, MA: Space-Time in Japan, 1979 : New York: Cooper-Hewitt Museum. n.d.). p. 13)