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Framing (Haacke's Condensation Cube)
Hans Haacke
April 17-May 20, 2004
Slought Foundation Vault
Reception on Saturday, April 17, 2004
Exhibition Openings Series
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Slought Foundation, an organization rethinking contemporary arts, presents "Framing (a Condensation Cube)," a vault installation featuring Hans Haacke's Condensation Cube of 1963-65 from April 17-May 20, 2004. This installation inaugurates a new series at Slought Foundation showcasing notable conceptual practices that invite a reconsideration of the effect framing has on critical interpretations.
An essay on Hans Haacke written in the 1980s by curator and critic Edward Fry (d. 1992) is also available through this website: http://slought.org/content/21085/
For Edward Fry, Haacke’s works were significant because they represented the rediscovery of and return to the original critical and emancipatory functions of modern art. “The consequence of these transgressions is to illuminate previously unnoticed myths, be they aesthetic, theoretical, or social, and to confront the instrumentalisms of thought and social practice which inevitably accompany these myths,” he wrote in his essay, “A New Modernity” also available on this website. The arrival of the new modernity that Haacke's work facilitated, Fry nevertheless cautioned, was “neither utopia nor anti-utopia, but a condition of responsible freedom defended by eternal vigilance.” These concerns are reflected in Fry’s writings on Haacke through the 1980s and in particular around the time of Documenta 8, which he co-curated with Manfred Schneckenburger in 1985.
In his early work, artist Hans Haacke was already concerned with systems and processes. His Condensation Cube of 1963-65 [Clear acrylic, water, light, air currents,
temperature, climate in exhibition situation; 30 x 30 x 30 cm; Collection of Edward Fry and Sandra Ericson] demonstrates the dependency of a relatively closed system on the environment in which it is situated: changes in temperature lead to the evaporation of water and its condensation on sidewalls of the cube.
Haacke’s condensation cube is a pedagogical tool still pertinent to understanding conceptual art and contemporary life. Questions to consider include: how does one frame or contextualize a work such as the condensation cube? What are its contents? To what degree is the cube a screen on which we can project our interpretations? Can this box be understood as a storage device, and if so, what is it storing?
Hans Haacke was born in Cologne, Germany in 1936 and has been living in New York since 1965. He studied at the “Staatliche Werkakademie” in Kassel, Germany, from 1956 to 1960, and then from 1961 to 1962 at the Tyler School of Fine Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, USA. From 1967 to 2002 he was Professor at the Cooper Union in New York, USA. He has received numerous prizes, including the Golden Lion of the Biennale di Venezia in 1993 (with Nam June Paik). Haacke became involved, initially, with physical and biological systems, with living animals, plants, the physical states of water and the wind. Under the title “Wind and Water” he presented his works for the first time in a solo exhibition at Galerie Schmela, Düsseldorf, Germany in 1965. A year later he introduced the legendary “Condensation Cube”(1963-65) at the Howard Wise Gallery in New York. There, in 1969, Haacke also carried out his first visitors’ polls in the “Gallery Goers’ Birth Place and Residence Profile” which would be followed by a series of further projects of this kind. At the same exhibition, he featured “Circulation” (1969), a variable network of plastic tubes through which water was being pumped. His solo exhibition scheduled to go on at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1971 was cancelled, and Curator Edward Fry dismissed, as the director at that time wanted to censor three works. (Projects at Slought Foundation featuring Edward Fry are available)
Haacke’s artistic practice grew increasingly into a concentrated analysis of and reflection on socio-political structures by employing investigative methods to focus attention on the machinations of individual politicians and companies. His projects have resulted in debates considered part of his artistic work.
Organized by
Aaron Levy
MLA Style:
Hans Haacke. "Framing (Haacke's Condensation Cube)." Slought Foundation Online Content. [17 April 2004;
Accessed 12 March 2010]. <http://slought.org/content/11208/>.
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