SAO PAULO.- Nara Roesler São Paulo is presenting Julio Le Parc: Couleurs, a solo show by the artist who is a key figure in the history of contemporary art and one of the leading names in kinetic art. With over 45 works, the show brings together the most recent creations by the France-based Argentinian artist, the vast majority of which are paintings, drawings, and a large-scale mobile.

Julio Le Parc’s main poetic interest is the study of movement, which has been explored throughout his career in the most diverse ways: through paintings, experiments with mirrors and other reflective surfaces, installations, motors, and even more daring installations, such as his presentation at the 1966 Venice Biennale, in which, in order to include the viewer, he transformed the installation into an amusement park. In recent years, however, the artist has dedicated himself to the Alchimies series. In this series of works, produced since the 1980s, the artist focuses on the study of color, its different palettes, and the results obtained from the interaction between them. His palette consists of 14 shades, which he has been using since 1959, and range from warmer tones, such as red and orange, to colder ones, such as blue and purple. However, in Alchemies, the colors are reduced to small fragments, as if they were particles, grouped and organized in different ways. Seen from afar, the viewer has the sensation of being in front of chromatic clouds that vibrate as the shades rub against each other, but up close, the particles of color present in the compositions become visible.

Another pictorial series in the exhibition is Ondes, in which Le Parc places bands of color side-by-side ranging from warmer tones, such as red, orange, and yellow, to colder ones, such as blue and purple. Through sinuous schemes, the interspersed colors create a dynamic surface. Complementing the set of paintings, the exhibition also brings together a series of studies on paper that the artist made of these pictorial series, especially the Alchimies, through which the artist’s creative and experimental process becomes visible.

The exhibition includes some of Julio Le Parc’s recent three- dimensional creations, such as a large mobile. Although mobiles have been recurring elements throughout his career, in this piece, the artist experiments with the same chromatic transition seen in the Alchimies and Ondes series. The selection also includes two pieces from Le Parc’s historical Continuel Lumière series, projected in 1960, the luminous structures containing acrylic plates colored with geometric patterns. Once lit, the light interacts directly with the chromatic plates, creating a vertical and ascending luminous effect.

Julio Le Parc (b. 1928, Mendoza, Argentina) is internationally recognized as one of the leading names in Optical and Kinetic art. Over the course of six decades, he has performed groundbreaking experiments on light, movement and color, seeking to promote new possibilities for the relationship between art and society from a utopian perspective. The artist’s canvases, sculptures, and installations challenge the traditional Art Historical definition of paintings: he uses mediums that pertain to pictorial tradition, such as acrylic on canvas, while incorporating formal kinetic processes in the assemblages and apparatus he employs.

Julio Le Parc was a co-founder of Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel (1960–68), a collective of optical-kinetic artists who set out to encourage the participation of viewers in their art, in order to enhance their abilities to perceive and act. In keeping with these premises, and more generally with the then quite disseminated aspiration to a dematerialized art, an art indifferent to market demands, the group showed in alternative venues and even on the street. Julio Le Parc’s works and installations, which were made from nothing other than the interplay of light and shadow, were a direct result of that context, where the production of a fleeting, unsellable art had a clear socio-political undertone.

Julio Le Parc lives and works in Paris, France. Recent solo shows include: Julio Le Parc: Un Visionario, at Centro Cultural Néstor Kirchner (2019), in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Julio Le Parc 1959, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met Breuer) (2018), in New York, USA; Julio Le Parc: da forma à ação, at Instituto Tomie Ohtake (ITO) (2017), in São Paulo, Brazil; Julio Le Parc: Form into Action, at Perez Art Museum (2016), in Miami, USA. Recent group shows include: Action Reaction. 100 Years of Kinetic Art, at Kunsthal Rotterdam (2018), Rotterdam, The Netherlands; The Other Trans-Atlantic: Kinetic & Op Art in Central & Eastern Europe and Latin America 1950s-1970s, at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art (2018), in Moscow, Russia, at Sesc Pinheiros (2018), in São Paulo, Brazil, and at Museum of Modern Art (2017), in Warsaw, Poland; Kinesthesia: Latin American Kinetic Art, 1954-1969, II Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA (II PST: LA/LA), at Palm Springs Art Museum (PSAM) (2017), in Palm Springs, USA; Retrospect: Kinetika 1967, at Belvedere Museum (2016), in Vienna, Austria; The Illusive Eye, at El Museo del Barrio (2016), in New York, USA. His works are a part of important collections, such as: Daros Collection, Zurich, Switzerland; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, USA; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, France; and The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, USA, among others.