- Artist
- Dóra Maurer born 1937
- Medium
- Wood and mirrored glass
- Dimensions
- Displayed: 895 × 2685 × 40 mm
- Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Presented by anonymous donors 2018
- Reference
- T15452
Summary
4 out of 3 1976 is a single work consisting of four vertical rectangular panels, constructed from mirror and wood, each weighing three kilogrammes and measuring one hundred centimetres by thirty centimetres. The panels are suspended side-by-side from the ceiling by wire cables, so as to form a straight horizontal line in space, with gaps of sixty centimetres between each panel. The overall displayed width is three hundred centimetres. The distance between the works is fixed, as the four objects together and the spaces between them form three ‘squares’ measuring one hundred by one hundred centimetres each, as alluded to in the work’s title: 4 out of 3. The work explores the tension between squares and rectangles. Ideally, the objects are to be hung in the centre of the display space, on a centre line of around one hundred and fifty centimetres from the floor. This enables the space and other works in the gallery to be reflected in the mirrors.
4 out of 3 was first exhibited in Maurer’s solo exhibition at István Király Múzeum, Székesfehérvár, central Hungary, in 1976. It is one of a series of works made in the 1970s in which she used her concept of ‘displacement’, referring to often quite minimal shifts in the position and orientation of a form (see also, Displacements [System Drawing] 1972, Tate T15450, and Displacements, Step 18 with Two Random-Quasi-Images 1976, Tate T15451). 4 out of 3 followed on from an installation of five paintings entitled 5 out of 4 1975, in which five canvases, each with a white background, were painted with vertical and horizontal lines. The vertical side of each composition was ‘displaced’ onto the next canvas, creating different visual interpretations: either five individual rectangular canvases or, when viewed as a whole installation, four ‘squares’. Maurer has commented:
The basic patterns are a horizontal series of four congruent squares touching each other (the square being an objective form) and a series of five coincident rectangles (which is a subjectively determined shape). The sides of the squares are equal to the long side of the rectangles; the two series are exactly of the same length and are laid on each other so that the rectangles hold the painted squares. The interference of the two series troubles the viewer in concentrating on one single form. The situation is further complicated by the rifts wedged between the image surfaces but, at the same time, this becomes a source of evolution from the basic situation.
(Quoted in Bunkier Sztuki, Krákow 2011, p.57.)
Maurer was interested in how something that is displaced appears in a new form or pattern and the transformation that necessarily takes place. Motion has always been linked in her practice with change (including existential change) – whether materials (drying), natural phenomena (wind), changes of place (falling, walking) or gestures (destruction) – and later with minimal displacements such as shifting a band of colour on a plane. The origin of the genre of displacements lay in her early experiments with printmaking, in which the processes of creasing, folding and distortion played a role (for a slightly later example, see Foldings 1975 [Tate P77124]). Then, between 1968 and 1970, Maurer created works in which one hundred different but identically organised units were aligned in a grid (for example organic-looking, crumpled paper balls). This developed in 1972 into an exploration of ‘displacement’ in terms of changes in the quantity of organic matter, such as piles of sticks or wheat on a grid, which Maurer referred to as ‘quantity boards’ (as in, for example, Quantity Board, 500 Values, Magic Square 1972). From this point, she divided a network into four equal parts, doubled the parts and shifted them horizontally, vertically and diagonally onto each other (Displacements diagrams), incorporating colour as part of the process. Works such as 4 out of 3 translate such investigations into three dimensions.
Further reading
Dieter Ronte and László Beke (eds.), Dóra Maurer, Works 1970–1993, Budapest 1994, reproduced pp.109, 121, 126–9.
Dóra Maurer, exhibition catalogue, Ludwig Museum, Budapest 2008, pp.9–10.
Dóra Maurer, Traces 1970–1980, exhibition catalogue, Bunkier Sztuki, Krákow 2011, reproduced pp.51, 57, 80–81.
Juliet Bingham
April 2018
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