Josef Albers was fascinated with how subtle changes made by an artist can affect our entire experience of an artwork. Albers began his White Line Square Series II in 1966 by making one seemingly minor adjustment to the composition familiar from his Homage to the Square series. While in the earlier series Albers was focused on the interactions that occur between directly abutting color fields, here, a white line separates neighboring areas of color. The tiny gap between these fields in works like WLS-XV muffles what would otherwise be intense vibrations or contrasts.

Label from The Swindle: Art Between Seeing and Believing, May 26–October 28, 2018