Bringing Latin American Masters of Kinetic and Light Art Out of Obscurity

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About Store Contact Bringing Latin American Masters of Kinetic and Light Art Out of Obscurity by Charissa Terranova on August 10, 2015 Installation view of ‘Cosmic Dialogues: Selections from the Latin American Collection’ with with Gyula Kosice’s “The Hydrospatial City” (photo by Cameron Bertuzzi, courtesy the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston) HOUSTON — Twentieth-century kinetic and light art has long been the redheaded stepchild of the art world. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s (MFAH) Cosmic Dialogues: Selections from the Latin American Collection is part of an emergent shift toward inclusivity driven by identity politics and the rising centrality of media art. Mari Carmen Ramírez, curator of Latin American art and director of the International Center for the Arts of the Americas at the MFAH, is well known for her feisty and brilliant development of an alternative narrative of modernism. With shows like Heterotopias at the Reina Sofiá in Madrid in 2000 and Inverted Utopias at the MFAH in 2004, Ramírez has been working to redirect the discourse about art of the Americas beyond Socialist Realism and the phenomena of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. She has gone to great lengths to set the thinking about modernism on a new path, raising the ire of many when she said of Kahlo, “she wasn’t such a great painter either.” Like her exhibitions of the early 2000s, which highlighted the work of then lesser-known conceptualists Hélio Oiticica and Lygia Clark, Cosmic Dialogues directs attention to the forgotten mobile-makers and light-casters of the mid 20th century. Hungarian-born Argentinean Gyula Kosice’s water-based works take center stage, alongside skeins of wire by the German-born Bringing Latin American Masters of Kinetic and Light Art Ou... http://hyperallergic.com/228426/bringing-latin-american-mast... 1 de 6 11/08/15 13:38

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Bringing american masters of kinetic and light art out of obscurity

Transcript of Bringing Latin American Masters of Kinetic and Light Art Out of Obscurity

AboutStoreContactBringing Latin American Masters of Kinetic and Light ArtOut of Obscurityby Charissa Terranova on August 10, 2015Installation view of Cosmic Dialogues: Selections from the Latin American Collection with with Gyula KosicesThe Hydrospatial City (photo by Cameron Bertuzzi, courtesy the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston)HOUSTON Twentieth-century kinetic and light art has long been the redheaded stepchild of the artworld. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houstons (MFAH) Cosmic Dialogues: Selections from theLatin American Collection is part of an emergent shift toward inclusivity driven by identity politicsand the rising centrality of media art. Mari Carmen Ramrez, curator of Latin American art anddirector of the International Center for the Arts of the Americas at the MFAH, is well known for herfeisty and brilliant development of an alternative narrative of modernism. With shows likeHeterotopias at the Reina So in Madrid in 2000 and Inverted Utopias at the MFAH in 2004,Ramrez has been working to redirect the discourse about art of the Americas beyond SocialistRealism and the phenomena of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. She has gone to great lengths to setthe thinking about modernism on a new path, raising the ire of many when she said of Kahlo, shewasnt such a great painter either.Like her exhibitions of the early 2000s, which highlighted the work of then lesser-knownconceptualists Hlio Oiticica and Lygia Clark, Cosmic Dialogues directs attention to the forgottenmobile-makers and light-casters of the mid 20th century. Hungarian-born Argentinean GyulaKosices water-based works take center stage, alongside skeins of wire by the German-bornBringing Latin American Masters of Kinetic and Light Art Ou... http://hyperallergic.com/228426/bringing-latin-american-mast...1 de 6 11/08/15 13:38Venezuelan Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt), Argentinean Julio Le Parcs hallucinatory light mobiles,Argentinean Gregorio Vardanegas cascading and luminous geometries, Argentinean MarthaBotos boxy optical displacements, and Abraham Palatniks motorized and colored shape-shifters.Most of the artists shown are modernists, with the exception of two Gen Xers: the ArgentineanGustavo Daz (b. 1969) and the Mexican Pablo Vargas Lugo (b. 1968).Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt), Esfera N 8! (Sphere No. 8!) (1977), steel wire with metal leader sleeves(Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, gift of the Fundacin Gego; Fundacin Gego)While it is something of a standby summer exhibition that will not travel and draws on works from thepermanent collection, it is stellar nonetheless because it showcases works that are rarely exhibited.The show is a bold representation of the direction Ramrez has taken the MFAHs collection of LatinAmerican art and an intriguing statement on the ghostlike but timely resurgence of mid-20th centuryConstructivism, geometric abstraction, Op, New Tendencies, kinetic, and light art.Bringing Latin American Masters of Kinetic and Light Art Ou... http://hyperallergic.com/228426/bringing-latin-american-mast...2 de 6 11/08/15 13:38Julio Le Parc, Continuel-lumire mobile (Continuouslight mobile or Unceasing Light Mobile) (196066),hanging metallic elements and spotlights (Museum ofFine Arts, Houston; museum purchase funded by the2005 Latin American Experience Gala and Auction, andthe Latin Maecenas; 2015 Artists Rights Society, NewYork / ADAGP, Paris) (click to enlarge)Work is shown across several galleries with varied lighting that accentuates the Rorschach playbetween light and dark on opposite walls, like those holding Dazs fastidious drawings of lines, bits,and pixels across from Lugos coins embedded in large and long frames of grey-black felt. Thoughthe title is overloaded with ironic references, Dazs Development of a Darwinist Worm-type ViralCode from a Square while Prigogine and Sol Lewitt Converse in the Existentialist Remainders (2011)appears weightless. Drawing meets sculpture as Daz makes patterns of cloud-like circuits andstriations across the wall. Turning the wall into a linear landscape of pixelated and raised orthogonalforms, the drawing passes from at to box-shaped acrylic.Kinetic light art, the pieces movements driven by motors, the museums HVAC system, andpassersby, occupies a dark gallery at the center of the exhibition. Mounted here are works of artrarely seen much less fully understood in their necessary four dimensions. Images online or in booksof Kosices Luminscent Circles and Line of Moving Water (1968) and Movable Drop of Water(1980), Palatniks Chromo-kinetic Set (1962), Botos Electronic Optic (1965), and VardanegasChromatic Spaces Turning in a Sprial (1968) never do justice to the work. It is virtually impossible toget your mind around these works without seeing them in person. How is one ever to know that LeParcs Continuous Light Mobile or Unceasing Light Mobile (196066) looks from afar like digitalellipses moving on a screen or light box but upon approach reveals itself to be discs dangling onstrings cast in light without experiencing it in the full dimensionality of walking through space?Bringing Latin American Masters of Kinetic and Light Art Ou... http://hyperallergic.com/228426/bringing-latin-american-mast...3 de 6 11/08/15 13:38Photograph of Gyula Kosice in the artists La ciudadhidroespacial (The Hydrospatial City) (1971) (photo bythe author for Hyperallergic)Kosices visionary Hydrospatial City (194672) is given its own gallery, where it is installed under atype of dappled light ideal for acrylic sculpture. The centerpiece of the exhibition, it is a utopianstatement consisting of 19 three-dimensional space habitat models and seven two-dimensional lightboxes imagining everyday life in outer space. The habitats are half and full orbs, hung from theceiling, ringed like planets, and populated with tiny, crystal-headed humans to establish scale. Thelight boxes house protruding sculptural reliefs in the form of plastic half-spheres and constellations ofsmall mirrors and dots, some of which have photographs collaged inside. One even shows a tinyphotograph of Kosice himself. Presented to and rejected by NASA scientists, Kosices theoretical citywas modeled on a philosophy about the ebb and ow of water. He envisioned an architecture inspace that surged like water, without boundaries. The orbs were to be habitats without division: therewould be no separation between kitchen, bathroom, living room, dining room, or bedrooms. KosicesDescriptive Memories: The Habitats of the Hydrospatial City reveals that the unbounded ow ofform spread to the programming of spaces as well. The oating orbs aimed to encourage anexpansive functionalism of the esh, their individual elements conceived by the artist as a pearl inthe great vagina of the world and a place to say mamma.Bringing Latin American Masters of Kinetic and Light Art Ou... http://hyperallergic.com/228426/bringing-latin-american-mast...4 de 6 11/08/15 13:38Detail of Gyula Kosice, Habitat hidroespacial, maqueta R (Hydrospatial Habitat, Model R), from La ciudadhidroespacial (The Hydrospatial City) (1969), acrylic, Plexiglas, paint, and metal (Museum of Fine Arts,Houston, museum purchase funded by the Caroline Wiess Law Accessions Endowment Fund; Gyula Kosice)Cosmic Dialogues foregrounds a forgotten body of work from the middle of the 20th century. Thework in this show is part of the deeper history of media art (what was formerly known as new mediaart), which by and large receded into the crevices of history because of its essentially geneticrelationships to technology and science. By technology, I mean the greater military industrialcomplex and the defense-based development of communication infrastructure (for instance, theinternet); and by science I mean the cognitive, behavioral, and psychological sciences. Afterchampioning kinetic, robotic, and software art in the late 1960s, curator and critic Jack Burnhamultimately rued these types of work, claiming in 1980 that they were too cumbersome, expensive, andclosely afliated with the US military. This arts mechanization and laboratory-like connection to theGestalt, cognition, and perception made it antithetical to linguistic and performance-basedconceptualism. These works became tainted by suspect political economy and branded as purekitsch while conceptual art came to the fore because of its politically correct, anti-military position,and anti-capitalist bravado.This stance of resistance seems nave if not romantic now that we, in the US at least, are perpetuallyat war. There is no Archimedean point from which to stand in resistance and wag a moralizing ngerat the world. And media art needs a history, of which kinetic and light art are essential parts. It hasbeen 35 years since Burnhams regrets, and even longer since the postwar neo-avant garde. Culturalmores have changed. So, as the taste-making of Clement Greenberg loses more of its monolithicauthority and we are forced into a world where the formative presence of the military industrialcomplex is simply normative, we can look with open eyes and deliberative minds at this work, takingpleasure its plays of light and mechanized movements.Bringing Latin American Masters of Kinetic and Light Art Ou... http://hyperallergic.com/228426/bringing-latin-american-mast...5 de 6 11/08/15 13:38Detail of Gyula Kosice, Constelaciones no. 4! (Constellations No. 4!), from La ciudad hidroespacial (TheHydrospatial City) (1971), acrylic, Plexiglas, paint, and light (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, museum purchasefunded by the Caroline Wiess Law Accessions Endowment Fund; Gyula Kosice)Cosmic Dialogues: Selections from the Latin American Collection continues at the Museum ofFine Arts, Houston (1001 Bissonnet, Houston, Texas) through August 23.Abraham PalatnikGegoGregorio VardanegaGustavo DazGyulaKosiceHoustonJulio Le ParcLatin American artMari Carmen RamrezMarthaBotoMuseum of Fine Arts HoustonPablo Vargas LugoBringing Latin American Masters of Kinetic and Light Art Ou... http://hyperallergic.com/228426/bringing-latin-american-mast...6 de 6 11/08/15 13:38