Combination 1968

This relief-like sculpture, by Johannes Jan Schoonhoven, is made from painted cardboard. I love how the surface is almost entirely white, but it’s a white that seems to hold all the colors – like the memory of color, a shadow of color. Look closely, and you’ll see that the artist hasn’t tried to hide how it's made. You can see all the seams, all the joins. The texture is dry, almost chalky, like plaster. I love the way the light plays across those vertical folds, it’s like a minimalist landscape. The verticals remind me of a cityscape or maybe even the pages of a book, and give the whole thing a kind of rhythm. Schoonhoven's work reminds me of Agnes Martin's subtle grids; it's about finding the sublime in simple geometry and humble materials. What does it mean to repeat something like this? And how does that repetition open up into something new? It feels like a mantra.