Untitled (from the Loops series)
Date: 1969
Art form: Installation Art
In the 1960s, artists in Los Angeles began to create works using industrial materials such as Plexiglas acrylic sheeting, fiberglass, and thermoset plastics that set and hardened into shape, as well as the acrylic lacquers favored by the automotive industry. In Craig Kauffman’s Loops series of 1969, each work comprises a sheet of Plexiglas that the artist molded into a looping fold at its top then sprayed with subtle gradations of acrylic paint. Hanging suspended from a chain a few inches from the wall, the objects seem to hover, and the color on their surface appears also in the shadows the work casts on the wall behind. Though Kauffman’s loops represent his continued exploration of color and of industrial materials, the phenomenological nature of their display brings them close to minimalism as it began to be defined in the second half of the 1960s.
