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Boxes for thinking about opening: fig.1 detail

L. This interaction with the work is central to the three pieces your are showing i.e. I-beam to walk through, drawing of box for standing but what about the boxes for thinking about opening, could you explain how as the viewer we step into the space of the work?
F. Yes, the process of looking is central to the work, it�s demanding on the viewer especially with objects. In order to know the object we...

...have to walk around it and sometimes even look underneath. It�s all a discovery of what the body is about. As well as relating to the body the I-beam works relate to space in which they are installed, it is a three-way negotiation between body, object and space.
When I set about making the boxes I had decided to try to make something where our experience of it, unlike the I-beam works, could be independent of the space in which it was placed. I am really attracted to boxes, the different ways they are designed to open, tags, perforations etc. and on reflection it is the perfect object to choose to �draw� to be independent from the space it is in because as an object it has an enclosed space... Its function is to be independent from places unlike the I-beam on which space is dependent.
With a box there is this tension between the external form and the desire to open� I�m going to sound like I should get out more, but I do love it when the perforations work, like when you open a tissue box. In the boxes for thinking about opening it is not possible to open the folds and perforations, you enter the space of the work in your imagination. Instead of a three-way negotiation it is a four-way between mind, body, object and space.

L. How does your drawing of box for standing in this exhibition differ from Robert Morris� Box for Standing? Through this citation, are you questioning also the perception of one�s reality?
F. I am interested in the works that he made about relating the body to space and form. I recently went up a climbing wall which� I�m not comparing it to his work but the activity had this element of total immersion of body and mind.

Drawing of "Box for Standing"

There isn�t always a definite reasoning to making things in the studio. I�d seen this picture of him in his box for standing in his book �Have I Reasons� and I suppose I just wanted to know how it felt, how he felt in the box. In an interview Morris said when asked why he described Box for Standing as �coffin like�, that it and the Passageway piece was about �Art as a closed space, a refusal of communication, a secure refuge and defence against the outside world, a dead zone and buffer against others who would intrude�. I thought it would make a good space to think in.