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TWO PIPES, FOURTEEN LOCATIONS

Peter Downsbrough

TWO PIPES, FOURTEEN LOCATIONS
1974

6 5/8 x 4 3/4 inches (16.8 x 12 cm)

80 pages / Unpaginated / Perfect bound / Softcover

63 plates (photographs)

Offset (black and white)

Publisher: Norman Fisher, New York

Printer: Perez Printing, New York

Print run: not noted (1,000)

ISBN: 0-8150-0732-9

LCCC: 74-12907

CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ NUMBER: 05

This is the first book in which Peter Downsbrough uses photographs. The sixty-four photographs show fourteen different locations of the Two Pipes. Made of two black gas pipes, and placed in the ground with a fixed distance between them, this series of sculptures constitute a key work. In the late 1960s, Peter Downsbrough had abandoned making large steel sculptures in order to look for a more intimate form; this research had already led to the first manuscript, Notes on Location, and, in 1970, to the Two Pipes exterior pieces that he photographed from various angles. At the same time, he also started Two Poles, which were interior pieces, as well as the drawings with the Two Lines, which he still uses today both in his books and in his works on paper. The table of contents at the beginning of the book lists all titles – the exact dimensions – and the various “temporary” locations of the Two Pipes. The two lines added on the spine of the book, with its monochrome grey cover, could be considered the first appearance of an illustration on a cover.

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Peter Downsbrough has developed a strongly reduced visual vocabulary, which he uses to investigate the given space in a very personal and precise way. His material consists of letters and lines. He uses adhesive letters, forming conjunctions, prepositions, verbs and/or nouns and applies them to the walls, floors and/or ceilings. Lines, for which he uses cloth tape, emphasize certain architectural elements. Metal pipes, in the space and sometimes on the wall, accentuate the space. Areas defined by lines or painted black sometimes play a role, and, with the lines and the words reveal the architecture of interior or exterior spaces.

This rigorous treatment of the space continues in Peter Downsbrough’s books, maquettes, photographs, videos or prints. They all reveal an extreme coherence, which some situate in the minimal and conceptual art movements. In the course of time, the spatial interventions with the parallel vertical pipes or dowels have been complemented with words, lines and planes. Conjunctions such as AS, IF, BUT, FROM, MAAR, OP, EN, ET, OU, MAIS… have a double function: they work as iconographic signs which underline and reveal the space, and they offer the viewer the possibility to go, in his/her mind, from one thought to the other. For a conjunction is a word that can’t be declined or conjugated; it establishes a connection between sentences or parts of sentences.

Peter Downsbrough: With the word, one takes part in a dialogue, a discourse on its precise meaning. The word for me is an object. It has both a precise and a vague meaning. It is a universe one is confronted with. But there is no obligatory way of reading.

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