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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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