JULIO LE PARC EXPLORES LIGHT, MOVEMENT AND PERCEPTION IN THE EXHIBITION ENCUENTROS VISUALES

Visual Encounters exhibits five series by the artist: Surface-Couleur (1959 - 2022), Lumière (1959 - 2022), Continuels-Mobils (1960 - 2022), Déplacement (1963 - 2022) and Alchimie (1988 - 2022). These series explore Le Parc's experimentation with light and color relationships through complex compositions on canvas and acrylic mobiles. In recent works, such as Alchimie 499 (2022), Le Parc continues his work with chromatic forms, dots and lines, interrogating color relationships, shown here alongside his signature suspended steel and plexiglass pieces. 

Throughout his work, Le Parc has sought to develop and explore abstract visual languages. In this exhibition, each series reveals the exploration of the fields of light, movement and perception, which combine to formalize Le Parc's status as a leading experimental artist and highlight the impact of his practice on the development of contemporary art.

"Much more than geometrism, kineticism or abstractionism, Le Parc's work functions as a technological device by relating objects, spaces and subjects in a specific moment of perception. It demonstrates that art, as technology, is situated between the social and the individual, the local and the global, space and time, the singular and the multiple, the visual and the corporeal, and between the artist and the viewer. Suspending the viewer's sense of identity, the experience of the works emphasizes the relational logic it seeks to produce," said Daniel Montero Fayad, specialist in Contemporary Mexican Art and responsible for the curatorial text of the exhibition.

Julio Le Parc (Mendoza, Argentina, 1928) is one of the most recognized figures in the field of research and experimental visual arts centered on modern pop-art and kinetic art, whose influence extends from the mid-20th century to the present. He studied at the National School of Fine Arts in Argentina, where he began his interest in the relationship between light and form. Immersed in the radical environment of the student movements of his native country, between 1955 and 1958 he took part in the occupations at the Academy of Fine Arts and in the reformulations of its curricula, orienting himself towards the proposals of avant-garde artists such as the Arte-Concreto-Invención movement and where he met the influential art critic Jorge Romero Brest.

In 1958 he traveled to Paris after receiving a scholarship from the French Cultural Service, where he met artists such as Victor Vasarely and other important representatives of kinetic art. From this, Le Parc draws not only his formal proposals in terms of movement, but also its political implications, as a way of articulating aesthetic experiences without the need for prior knowledge or any familiarity with the art world. Such implications derive from the collective practices of the Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel (GRAV), of which he was a founding member; guided by a rejection of the position of art in capitalism. The collective emphasized anonymity and viewer participation through the application of industrial, mechanical and kinetic techniques alike.

Visual Encounters. Julio Le Parc exhibition.

Until November 12.

RGR Gallery, 48 Gral. Antonio León St., San Miguel Chapultepec, Mexico.