Déplacement instable | Mouvement, vibration, illusion d’optique

Textes
Jessica Bargman, A&R Fleury
Lélia Mordoch, founder and director of the Galerie Lélia Mordoch, Paris

“These works exist less as objects to be examined than as generators of perceptual responses.” It was with these words that William C. Seitz, curator of the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York, presented the exhibition “The Responsive Eye,” of which he was the curator.

It was 1965, ten years after the exhibition “Le movement” at the Galerie Denise René in Paris, still considered today as the birthplace of kinetic art, and accompanied by the “Manifeste jaune,” its founding text. Victor Vasarely, accompanied by 7 other artists including Yaacov Agam, Pol Bury, Alexander Calder, Jean Tinguely and Jesús-Rafael Soto, presented his personal conceptions of the movement.

From its beginnings on the European scene in the 1950s, breaking away from easel-painting, considered to be too intellectual, kinetic art encompassed individual and collective approaches. These aimed to bring to fruition an idea dating back to the beginning of the century among certain abstract artists, particularly those related to geometric abstraction: identifying a method capable of creating a visual language with a universal scope.