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HANS HAACKE
Born Cologne (Germany), 1936. Lives in New York
Condensation Cube, 1963
Perspex, water, 30 x 30 x 30 cm
Collection of the City of Paris Modern Art Museum, Paris
The emblematic piece by Hans Haacke, Condensation Cube, is a simple sealed box of transparent perspex, the walls of which exude water to give the effect of condensation. Through this simple gesture, the artist brings into question the fundamental attitudes of minimalism in art. No longer is it a “specific object”, autonomous and exclusive, but something organic and alive, the ideal internal transparency of which is distorted by a continual, spontaneous chemical reaction caused by the difference in temperature between two worlds. As Haacke has said, “its conditions are comparable to those of a living organism, which reacts in a flexible way to its surroundings. The form the condensation takes cannot be predicted in a precise way - it changes freely, limited only by its conditions. I like this freedom”. Oozing, dripping, flowing... insulation and enclosure produce a banal reaction which becomes almost indecent when displayed in public - an inanimate machine which is detached and out of control. This instability is in effect both disturbing and fascinating, and even somewhat erotic.
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