ДЖОН МАК-КРАКЕН
约翰·麦克拉肯
ジョン·マクラッケン
STAR, INFINITE, DIMENSION, AND ELECTRON

John McCracken’s work embodies a threshold of physical matter and infinite mind/space. In his own words, this ‘character,’ of his work has been indefinable and difficult to write about as an integral whole. Typically referred to as one of the leading West Coast counterparts to the Minimalist regime of Donald Judd, Carl Andre, Robert Morris, Dan Flavin, Sol Lewitt and Robert Bladen, McCracken’s work extends the architecture of Minimalism, complicates the surface of simulated or real machine production, and reflects a mysticism of transcendence.

ДЖОН МАК-КРАКЕН
约翰·麦克拉肯
ジョン·マクラッケン
Untitled (Black Block)
John McCracken (1934-2011) developed his early sculptural work while studying painting at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland in the late 1950s and early 1960s. While experimenting with increasingly three-dimensional canvases, the artist began to produce objects made with industrial materials, including plywood, sprayed lacquer, and pigmented resin, creating the highly reflective, smooth surfaces that he was to become known for.

Джон Мак-Кракен
约翰·麦克拉肯
ジョン·マクラッケン
Star, Infinite, Dimension, and Electron

“The geometric forms McCracken employed were typically built from straight lines: cubes, rectangular slabs and rods, stepped or quadrilateral pyramids, post-and-lintel structures and, most memorably, tall planks that lean against the wall. Usually, the form is painted in sprayed lacquer, which does not reveal the artist’s hand. An industrial look is belied by sensuous color.His palette included bubble-gum pink, lemon yellow, deep sapphire and ebony, usually applied as a monochrome. Sometimes an application of multiple colors marbleizes or runs down the sculpture’s surface, like a molten lava flow. He also made objects of softly stained wood or, in recent years, highly polished bronze and reflective stainless steel.Embracing formal impurity at a time when purity was highly prized, the works embody perceptual and philosophical conundrums. The colored planks stand on the floor like sculptures; rely on the wall for support like paintings; and, bridging both floor and wall, define architectural space. Their shape is resolutely linear, but the point at which the line assumes the dimensional properties of a shape is indefinable.” Christopher Knight

“The David Zwirner gallery, which has exhibited the artist’s work since 1997 and represents his estate, has asserted that the mystery monolith is a bona fide McCracken“. Deborah Solomon