John Panting
Aotearoa New Zealand, b.1940, d.1974
Untitled V
- 1972
- Steel
- Purchased 1975
- 1830 x 3050 x 1520mm
- 79/395.a-d
Tags: abstraction, monochrome
For the exhibition Untitled #1050 (25 November 2017 – 14 October 2018) this work was displayed with the following label:
The seemingly precarious balance of parts in this work is a result of Panting seeking “a realisation of balance and symmetry in a way that produces tension between states of stable and unstable equilibrium”. Sculptures such as this one were deliberately non-representational and seemingly free from the artist’s touch in an attempt to depersonalise them. He wrote, “A feature of the work is the necessity of seeing its structure in visual terms, and to this end the physical means of realising it have been kept as discrete as possible.”
“Sculpture – a unique capacity to attend to the nature of spatial relationships, their manipulation and the nature of their construction and perception – movement analysed in terms of sequence – qualities of weight, substance, an occasion to examine sequences of construction / manipulation – problem to divest material of associative meaning – avoiding begging questions of meaning in material terms – illustration – presentation of perceptual configurations that function in terms of their relationships – eschewing alternative literary, structural or mathematical interpretation.”
—John Panting, undated