Carl Andre (b. 1935, Quincy (MA)) is an American sculptor and poet, commonly revered as the figurehead of Minimalism. Andre’s sculptures range from large-scale public artworks, to smaller, intimate installations. Working with both naturally occurring and raw, factory-finished materials such as wood or metal, Andre characteristically constructs works by ordering and placing existing elements into organised geometric configurations, often directly onto the ground, with visitors invited to walk across them. Andre’s practice, in its geometric precision and call to interaction, directs attention to our phenomenological existence and interaction, questioning and inverting notions concerned with sculptural display, and probing the relationship between spatiality and perception, between the self and the object perceived, thus redefining the very nature of sculpture itself – sculpture as place.
