Art News

Mystics or Rationalist? Exhibition at Ingleby Gallery Introduces Principles of Conceptual Art

EDINBURGH.- It is forty years since Sol LeWitt published his famous Sentences: a sequence of 35 statements that defined personal parameters for the making and understanding of conceptual art. Sentence number one provides the title and inspiration for Ingleby Gallery’s exhibition for the 2011 Edinburgh Art Festival and is still a compelling and instructive introduction to the first principles of conceptual art. The exhibition presents the work of nine artists each of whom make work that invites the viewer to make the leap between an idea and an object. In every case the resulting artwork is a thing of grace and intrigue in itself, but always the story of why it exists in the world raises it to yet another level. “The idea” as LeWitt noted, “is the machine that makes the art”. Four mirrored cubes by Jeremy Millar run down the centre of the main gallery, each sitting on a bed of rock salt. M