Liz Deschenes / Sol LeWitt

“Conceptual artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach,” Sol LeWitt (1928-2007) famously wrote as the first of 35 “Sentences on Conceptual Art,” published in 1969. It’s the perfect way to introduce his understanding of the work that artists create that manifests the Idea in physical space.

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By forgoing the impulse towards linear thought, we lean more heavily on our sensory, perceptual, and emotional reactions. In doing so, we can be liberated from the tyranny of linear thought, its presumption of supreme validity, and its insistence on a singular way of comprehending the world. By abandoning the rational, we open ourselves to new experiences that can take us beyond the limitations of the “known.” It is in this fresh, uninhibited space we may come to discover new, uncharted depths of the soul.