Dynamo: A century of Light and Motion in Art, 1913-2013 is the title of the exhibition currently on view at the Grand Palais in Paris. The exhibit, dedicated to abstraction and kinetic art of the last 100 years, is a celebration of light, color and movement that elicits all sorts of emotions. It is also about experimentation. Abstraction is perhaps the artistic movement that requires most interaction from the viewer, who must dialogue with the piece to fully appreciate the optical illusions placed before him by the artist.
JESÚS RAFAEL SOTO. Penetrable BBL Blue, 1999.
The display contains 205 paintings and sculptures by 150 artists; it occupies more than 40,000 square feet of exhibition space at the Grand Palais, with some of the pieces shown in palace’s vicinity. According to the press release, the exhibition is divided into two categories: vision and space, which in turn are “subdivided by themes such as permutation, concentric/eccentric, interference, immersion or distortion, depending on the purpose of the work.”
There is a strong representation of Latin American artists in this exhibit since kinetic art had a profound influence on the development of modernism in Latin America. Some of the most significant artists present in the Paris exhibit are: Carlos Cruz-Díez, Elías Crespín, Jesús Rafael Soto and Alejandro Otero (Venezuela); Carmelo Arden Quin (Uruguay); Julio Le Parc, Antonio Asís, Martha Boto, Hugo Demarco, Horacio Garcia Rossi and Luis Tomasello (Argentina); Mauricio Nogueira Lima, Almir Mavignier, Sérvulo Esmeraldo, Lygia Clark and Mary Vieira (Brazil); and Francisco Sobrino and Ángel Duarte (Spain).
CARLOS CRUZ-DÍEZ. Transchromie mécanique, 1965.
Other important artist on view: Bruce Nauman, Dan Flavin, Hans Haacke, James Turrell, Alexander Calder, Dan Graham (United States); Yayoi Kusama (Japan-US); Jean Tinguely (Switzerland); Marcel Duchamp and François Morellet (France); Bridget Riley and Conrad Shawcross; Anish Kapoor (India-London); Jeppe Hein (Denmark), and Takis (Greece).
Dynamo will be on view at the Grand Palais in Paris until July 22, 2013. ■
