Untitled (Battered Cubes) 1966

Curator: These squat little grey monsters exude such a solemn, quiet unease. It’s as though geometry is staging a silent coup. Editor: Indeed. What we’re observing here is Robert Morris' "Untitled (Battered Cubes)," crafted back in 1966. This work stands as a key example of Minimalist sculpture, exploring the interplay between object, space, and viewer perception, radically altering art conventions by eliminating hierarchical aesthetic values in favor of spatial and material perception. Curator: Spatial and material perception. Hmm, I think it's more guttural than that! They remind me of misplaced dice after a very angry god lost a bet. Editor: Perhaps, but Morris's approach wasn't so whimsical. Think of it more as an intentional disruption of traditional art values – dematerializing the art object itself and prompting questions around institutional spaces and performative viewership. How does one “look” in a gallery like this? How are bodies managed around objects? Curator: Manage that they don't trip over them, mostly, because these low profile cubes make the whole gallery feel like one big obstacle course! It is amazing how shapes so simple can completely throw me off balance. They seem defeated. Editor: And I suspect that’s quite intentional. Minimalism's serial logic challenged mass production, late capitalism’s alienated labor force, and standardization in all its forms. Morris sought a sense of defamiliarization. Curator: Maybe… or maybe he was just making abstract shapes that happened to tickle the right corners of our collective unconscious? It’s funny how an attempt at stark rationalism so quickly transforms into something much more primordial when released to the wild! Editor: And that's perhaps where its potency lies, in that tension between rigid form and evocative possibility. Morris managed to produce a type of sublime aesthetic encounter that opened new avenues to explore and expand one's subjective consciousness. Curator: These shapes are silent protestors yelling to the gods! What I appreciate about it, however it was originally intentioned, is that these simple blocks contain multitudes. Editor: Absolutely. It's about prompting the viewer to complete the artistic process in real-time, making visible those everyday gestures in art viewing and how they have been carefully produced to elicit a specific outcome. It asks who makes that decision and how.