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Lot Essay
As veterans of performance art, Marina Abramović's and Ulay's collaborative work often went to extremes. Relation in Space was originally performed at the 38th Venice Biennale in 1976, where the two unclothed artists walked toward and passed each other, slowly gaining momentum and culminating in a violent clash. Presented in a Muybridge-like photographic format, Relation in Space (Group of 7) powerfully captures the sequence of action in this groundbreaking performance.
'Abramović/Ulay's action cannot be copied, repeated or re-enacted without losing its historical integrity and aesthetic elegance, for it was a moment shared and created between two artists, their public and a camera. This work belongs to the 1970s, when the mere presentation of the nude body in a simple action within an art context could elicit authentic excitement and even awe as the public confronted for the first time the radical possibility of the body's visual, non-verbal, non-narrative communication. Relation in Space took fifty-eight minutes to perform and remains a singular, unforgettable event in the history art, and a work that even Abramović/Ulay could not recapture in actions such as Interrupting in Space (January 1977) or Expansion in Space (June 1977), which duplicated many of its formal elements. Relation in Space is one of a handful of unsurpassed actions in the history of Body Art' (K. Stiles, 'Cloud with its Shadow', in K. Stiles, Marina Abramovic, London 2008, pp. 73-74).
'Abramović/Ulay's action cannot be copied, repeated or re-enacted without losing its historical integrity and aesthetic elegance, for it was a moment shared and created between two artists, their public and a camera. This work belongs to the 1970s, when the mere presentation of the nude body in a simple action within an art context could elicit authentic excitement and even awe as the public confronted for the first time the radical possibility of the body's visual, non-verbal, non-narrative communication. Relation in Space took fifty-eight minutes to perform and remains a singular, unforgettable event in the history art, and a work that even Abramović/Ulay could not recapture in actions such as Interrupting in Space (January 1977) or Expansion in Space (June 1977), which duplicated many of its formal elements. Relation in Space is one of a handful of unsurpassed actions in the history of Body Art' (K. Stiles, 'Cloud with its Shadow', in K. Stiles, Marina Abramovic, London 2008, pp. 73-74).