CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 4/13/2020

'Tauba Auerbach — S v Z' is a book to be reckoned with, slowly, with an open mind

"Untitled (Fold)" (2013) is reproduced from Tauba Auerbach — S v Z, the ever-more-intriguing catalog for the 16-year survey originally scheduled to open this month at SFMOMA. As in all things Tauba, this book is also an experiment, fitting neatly into her practice as an artist's book maker and inveterate question-asker. Beginning with the title—in which the "v" does not stand for "versus," but instead calls upon the mathematic symbol for "and/or"—and extending to the deeply satisfying custom-marbled black-and-white edges of the book block, this is a volume to be reckoned with slowly and with a very open mind. Created by the artist and David Reinfurt, who designed a new typeface based on Auerbach's iconic, back-slanting handwriting, it is filled with material, spatial and temporal ideas, structures, reflections, problems and solutions. For example, in the Folds, Auerbach attempts to conjure nothing less than four-dimensional space. "The Fold paintings are my effort to construct a portal through which to summon—or at least imagine—this inaccessible hyper-spatial territory," she is quoted. "My hope is that if these paintings can successfully efface the boundary between two-and three-dimensionality, then by analogy they imply the possibility of eroding the boundary between three-dimensional space and beyond. Even if it remains physically impossible to experience four-dimensional space, I believe we can use this 'logic' to approach or inhabit it in our minds."