This exhibition commemorates the centenary of the birth of Jesús Rafael Soto (Ciudad Bolívar, Venezuela, 1923 - Paris, France 2005), bringing together a selection of historical works from the artist’s Estate, which recall a search developed over five decades to propose a new aesthetic territory that incorporates time and space.
A leading figure in Kinetic art, Soto is one of the last century's most influential figures in Latin American and European art. Faced with a world in constant movement, kineticism, in the words of the art critic Jean Clay, became aware of the instability of the real. Soto's practice transcended the static concepts of form and volume by formulating serial relationships between the elements that made up his work. He gradually integrated instability, vibration, and dematerialization processes in order to transfer the pictorial plane into three-dimensional space.
This new perceptual experience of the artistic object, in which the spectator's participation is essential, began in the fifties and traced a path towards the broader experimental turn. In our current nonstop changing world, the premises postulated by Soto reclaim a conscious evaluation of the tremendous speed with which we inhabit and perceive time and space.
The exhibition has been curated by Tatiana Cuevas and Paola Santos Coy, who, in 2005, carried out the show Jesús Rafael Soto. Vision in motion, presented at the Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico City, traveling to Fundación Proa in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and GAMeC in Bergamo, Italy.