The group show Em Movimento [In Motion] highlights the most significant artists in the field of kinetic abstraction who Raquel Arnaud has worked with over the years. The exhibition on the gallery’s first floor features 14 kinetic artworks by pioneers such as Carlos Cruz-Diez, Jesús Rafael Soto, Luis Tomasello and François Morellet, along with others by second-generation artists like Dario Pérez-Flores and Hugo Demarco, as well as Elias Crespin and Wolfram Ullrich.
The first exhibition of this art trend at the gallery was by Venezuelan artist Carlos Cruz-Diez, in 1987. According to Arnaud, the present group show is being held in honor of the artist’s 90th birthday this year. The gallery also introduced Jesús Rafael Soto to the Brazilian circuit.
About the artists:
CARLOS CRUZ-DIEZ, 1923 (Venezuela/Paris)
Cruz-Diez is internationally recognized for his Physichromies and Chromointerferences, which give rise to interferences in space, and for his large-scale sculptural works that explore the theory and practice of color.
JESÚS RAFAEL SOTO, 1923-2005 (Venezuela/Paris)
Time and movement were the main concerns in this Venezuelan artist’s works in painting, sculpture and kinetic art. Famous for his
Penetrables – sculptures that the observer can enter and interact with – Soto moved to Paris in 1951, where he got to know some German and Swiss artists, including Josef Albers, and began to treat on the independence of color to consciously resolve what he called “the special ambivalence of color.”
“I felt that color needed and was demanding a spatiotemporal solution that could find a place in the spatial ambiguity that I was interested in making evident.”
LUIS TOMASELLO, 1915 (Argentina/Paris)
After his studies in Buenos Aires, he moved to Paris in 1957, where he joined a group of kinetic and op artists. He became known for his Chromoplastic Atmospheres, fragmented sculptures that changed the pattern of colors, light and shadow.
DARIO PÉREZ-FLORES, 1936 (Venezuela/Paris)
Under the influence of Jesús Soto and Carlos Cruz-Diez, Pérez-Flores joined the op art movement in 1970. He created works that subtly generate an optical vibration, a changing chromatic atmosphere, attracting the viewer to the center of the work.
HUGO DEMARCO, 1932–1995 (Argentina/Paris)
Demarco soon began to expand his practice in painting, exploring new materials that allowed for a different approach to color. Although he did not declare affiliation with any art movement, his works combine the legacy of constructivism with the wide tradition of Bauhaus, blending the autonomy and experimental nature of art. Focusing on color and movement, he painted canvases and created reliefs and motorized objects that challenge the spectator’s perception.
FRANÇOIS MORELLET, 1926 (France/Paris)
This French artist was a firm believer in the lemma “art for art’s sake.” His titles are sophisticated and describe the conditions of the artwork’s production. In his extensive career he worked with countless materials, and seeking a new means of expression, in 1963 he began to use neon, which interested him for being both luminous and a manufactured material.
ELIAS CRESPIN, 1965 (Venezuela/Paris)
His electrokinetic sculptures are composed of simple geometric figures, suspended by invisible wires and mechanically animated by computer according to complex mathematical patterns, resulting in movements of extreme lightness and harmony.
WOLFRAM ULLRICH, 1961 (Germany/Stuttgart
Ullrich works with tridimensional geometric abstractions. His works deal with the installation’s spatial environment, dynamizing the relations between space and movement as constant variables.