陶巴·奧爾巴赫

Standard Oslo, Oslo

Acquired from the above by the present owner

Gwangju, Gwangju Biennale, 1000 Lives - The Gwangju Biennale, 2010

Exh. Cat., Bergen, Kunsthall Bergen, (and travelling), Folds: Tauba Auberach, 2012, p. 68, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colour in the catalogue illustration is fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is more saturated and vibrant in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultra-violet light.
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Executed in 2010, Tauba Auerbach’s mesmerising Untitled (Fold) is an extremely rare example of the artist's iconic Fold paintings and is one of only four works that are created on this monumental scale. In the present work peaks of diffused pink, green and soft blue pigment seems to crest and plummet across a completely smooth canvas surface, miming the sculptural effect of a crumpled cloth. Begun in 2009, these luminous, delicately textured works operate in the liminal space between painting and sculpture, an indeterminate area that the artist has coined the ‘2.5^th dimension’. In doing so, Auerbach positions her practice at the apogee of a long art historical lineage that has explored this mysterious zone, from the luxurious painted folds in the drapery of Renaissance paintings to Lucio Fontana’s revolutionary Tagli in which the artist innovatively punctured the surface of the canvas and dissolved the barrier between painting and sculpture. Attesting to the importance of the Fold paintings, other examples are held in the permanent collections of numerous prestigious institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Moderna Museet, Stockholm.

To create these hypnotic, illusionary networks of creases Auerbach meticulously crumples, contorts and folds canvas into precisely chosen, yet utterly chaotic shapes. To preserve these wrinkled forms the artist irons or places weights onto the canvas, and leaves the creases to settle and sink in over several days. The purposefully folded canvas is then gently spread on the floor and sprayed directionally with acrylic paint to emphasize and mimick the tonal patterns of light falling on a creased surface. Once dry, the canvas is then pulled taught over the stretcher leaving behind a sculptural impression of folds: a three dimensional object on an utterly flat surface. This intriguing and constructed interplay between light and shadow takes centre stage in Untitled (Fold) as ripples of hazy colour pulsate and radiate, springing up from the canvas surface as though a majestic mountain range. As the artist explains, “this is my take on trompe-l'oeil or traditional realist painting, one that relies on strategy rather than virtuosity” (Tauba Auerbach quoted in: Exh. Cat., Bergen, Bergen Kunsthall, (and travelling), Folds: Tauba Auerbach, 2012, p. 105). 

Fascinated by Topology, the mathematical study of shapes, Auerbach has long been preoccupied by constructing a system of formulas and methods that are aimed at challenging conventional logic and perceptions of space. Through painting the compelling three-dimensional patterns in Untitled (Fold), Auerbach attempts to challenge the limits of human perception and our common understanding of form, revealing a new kind of dimensional richness to enthral and entice the viewer. According to the artist, the disciplines of art, science, mathematics, and language are interconnected in that they ultimately converge into one unifying field that shapes human experience – affecting not only our spatial perception but also our colour recognition. As Jeffrey Deitch expands "[Auerbach’s work is] instilled with conceptual rigor and philosophical challenge. She has been able to update the type of conceptual structures in the work of an earlier generation of artists... extend[ing] the tradition of modern abstraction painting into a contemporary context, both conceptually and formally” (Jeffrey Deitch quoted in: Exh. Cat., Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art, The Painting Factory: Abstraction after Warhol, 2012, p. 7). Rigorous and considered, Untitled (Fold) is Auerbach at her very finest.