Vincent Fecteau (b. 1969) has, over the last two decades, forged a singular aesthetic that mixes homespun materials (popsicle sticks, champagne corks, string, and the like), meticulous craftwork, and a curious formal grammar. By turns wonky, erotic, extraterrestrial, or baroque—and sometimes, paradoxically, all of these at once—his sculptures are built from small, slow accumulations in which layering, texture, and the work of the hand are all visible. Rigid geometries and the heft of the modernist sculpture that his work evokes are forfeited in favor of something far more modest, wildly irrational, and psychically charged.
you have did the right thing when you put that skylight in is published in conjunction with Fecteau’s 2015 Kunsthalle Basel presentation of the same name, the San Francisco-based artist’s largest exhibition to date and his first solo show in Switzerland. The publication traces, as also did the exhibition, a selection of sculptural works spanning from 2000 to the present, including a new body of wall-based three-dimensional collages. Richly illustrated with installation views and photographs taken by the artist himself, it functions almost like an artist’s book, and includes a letter to the artist by Bruce Hainley.
