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Robert Therrien’s No title (red arch relief) is a wooden wall sculpture reaching five feet tall, nearly a foot-and-a-half wide, and just over four inches deep. Made in 1985, the artwork is shaped like a cathedral arch window. Instead of wood-framed glass, Therrien painted a solid piece of carved wood in deep crimson red with oil and wax. The single, rich color along with the shape might also remind the viewer of the top half of a crayon without its paper wrapper. Like a crayon, the waxy finish is somewhat matte but gleams where the light hits it.

Viewed from the front, the top of the sculpture seems like a pointy tip. But viewing the artwork from either side reveals that this tip spans the full depth of just over four inches, so that the top is a line, not just one point. The left and right sides of the sculpture gently slope outward from this narrow top to about halfway down. By this near-midway point, the sides then straighten and continue down in parallel until they reach the straight bottom edge.

From a distance, the sculpture’s surface seems smooth and unadorned, and the color feels a uniform crimson. Up close, several natural imperfections become apparent. The front face has barely noticeable little nicks and pits in the wax layer above the paint, and slight undulations in the surface of the wood can be spotted. The edges of the front face contain the most variation. They appear almost black, and this darker color is scratched through in very thin strokes, both long and short, giving these edges substantial texture. This creates the feeling of shadows on the edges of the front face that compliment the dusky shadows that fall along the wall from the body of the artwork itself.