Sol LeWitt

Because in the act of perceiving, viewers who begin to perceive the initially irritating confinement and lastly the futility of their intended spatial experience together with their own impressions reflect upon themselves and all of their reactions. After all, one in no way registers the phenomena from a neutral position, rather one also imagines oneself at the same time as a seeing, hearing, and feeling person precisely in the event of the withdrawal of a particular experience. For instance when it is prohibited from advancing into the space because of the wall, and one is thrown back onto oneself and one's initial helplessness and uncertainty. In this way one naturally also notices one's own reactions and changes with reference to what one has just seen and heard. In the end one understands the dependence of the perceptions one has just had on one’s physical presence in the narrow space under the gallery and directly before the dividing wall. Ideally, the viewer sees and reflects the conditions of the possibilities and boundaries of his or her experience in a critical way. However, something like this is an aesthetic experience which in its very foundations distinguishes itself both from indifferent satisfaction with, as well as from blind consent to, art that, so to speak, proceeds didactically in a liberating way. It is a matter of tracking down the possibilities of changing oneself (and thus the circumstances in which one lives) beyond one's own biases and limitations. And as already suggested in the title of the work, this succeeds despite—or perhaps due to—becoming aware of the loss.

Peter Friese