Continous light in Movement

Movement is the very essence of kinetic art, whose heyday was in the 1960s, though its roots stretched back to the constructivism and Dadaism of the early twentieth century. Julio LeParc was a leading practitioner of kinetic sculpture, not least through his participation in the Groupe de la Recherche d’Art Visuel (GRAV) in Paris in the 1960s. Calling for the artist’s role to change, the group’s manifesto boldly rejected the static picture: art was rather to be dynamic and involve the viewer in an interactive manner. Op-art and kinetic art became the experimental solution for how to transcend the established system of art.

Le Parc regarded his artistic endeavour as a type of research, studying in particular the lighting effects that occur when a sculpture is in movement. Continuel Lumière Mobile was acquired by the museum after it was shown at the “Visual Environment 1: Lightand Movement” exhibition at Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo in 1969. The one-metre-high, wall-mounted sculpture consists of a rectangular metal plate that has been painted white. Thin strings with small, circular bits of Plexiglas have been fastened in rows in front of the white plate. The strings hang freely, and the slightest puff of wind causes them to move. Lights fixed to the plate’s upper and lower edges illuminate the circles. The combination of movement and light in the freely hanging strings and circles heightens the lighting effects, creating an illusion of weightlessness in the seemingly levitated Plexiglas circles. This simple non-mechanical movement has much in common with the mobiles and sculptures of Alexander Calder.