Carl Andre: Things in Their Elements

Carl Andre (born 1935), is among the foremost exponents of minimalism. Although best known for his grid-based floor sculptures, his output is diverse, encompassing large, outdoor public artworks and small sculptures, poetry and installations.

Alistair Rider explores the full range of Andre's ideas and materials extending from his controversial configurations of bricks to numerous metals, wood and even hay bales. Rider shows how Andre, fascinated by the raw materiality of things in the everyday world, transforms them into sites of contemplation and aethetic focus.

Alistair Rider is a Lecturer in Art History at the University of St Andrews. He received his PhD from the University of Leeds, and was a research fellow at the University of York for two years before moving to Scotland. He teaches classes on modern sculpture, critical theory, New York modernism and experimental art of the 1960s. In 2006 he co-edited an anthology of art criticism on Carl Andre (About Carl Andre: Critical Writings since 1965), and more recently has written on Robert Smithson, in 'Arts of Isolation, Arts of Coalition', in On Location: Siting Robert Smithson and his Contemporaries (2008). Articles on British Sculpture in the late 1960s (Royal Academy) and Richard Long and Carl Andre (Getty Publications) are forthcoming.