Douglas Huebler hopes eventually to be so enlightened that he will no longer feel it necessary to make art. Since 1968, when he abandoned minimal sculpture for Conceptual Aa, and created a catalogue that was its own exhibition, he has produced a body of
work that would seem to indicate he is heading in just such a direction.

Like other Conceptual artists, Huebler has no wish to add more objects to the world and holds that art has exhausted its retinal, decorative function. Conceptual Art also eliminates the role of the critic—information pertaining to a work appears on the work.

Huebler makes ihc further renunciation of the pose of Arrist-as-Hero where, as he puts it, “The artist tells the viewer, ‘Nature meant something but it didn’t quite express it—let me show you what it meant.’’’ The arbitrary, purposely banal constructs of Huehler are, by comparison, “not selected for special qualities in themselves but depict what the world may look like if you point to it at a particular instant; it is the pointing to the world and making special moments for the self that are important.”

Huebler is not dabbling in mere perceptual games. He is deeply concerned about a “resynthesis of vision’’ that might enable man to make orderout of the barrage of visual and written information that confronts him. The “mind jumps” occasioned hy Huebler’s pieces are intimations of what such a synthesis might be.

—F.B.H.

 


The line represented above is extending towards infinity at aspeed that is visually imperceptible.

 


This surface exists, at this instant, within an environment where an act of social intercourse, very similar to an indetermi-nate number of others since forgotten, will occur once again.