Sophie Taeuber-Arp’s works are frequently encountered through repetition — circles returning, lines shifting, forms adjusting across surfaces.
Variation is the language most often used to approach the work. It suggests movement, progression, development. A practice unfolding.
Here, repetition behaves differently. Shapes return without momentum. Lines repeat without direction. There is little interest in advancing toward a conclusion. The work holds its position.
That holding condition governs everything that follows. A small painted sculpture contained within a vitrine does not interrupt the paintings behind it, despite the shift into volume. It follows the same rules. Color remains contained. Edges stay disciplined. Orientation remains frontal. The object stays aligned with the wall, compressed rather than released. Scale changes; behavior does not.
Time follows the same logic. Works made years apart operate under identical conditions. Chronology flattens. Development is irrelevant. What accumulates is familiarity — recognition that remains active without resolving into certainty.
Restraint, here, is not neutral. Control is sustained. By refusing escalation, the work prevents looking from turning into interpretation. Attention slows because there is nowhere else for it to go.
The forms do not ask to be decoded or compared. They ask to be stayed with. Not to understand what they mean, but to notice how long they can hold without changing. These conditions remain available.
