Grey Art Gallery<\/a><\/p>\nJanuary 10th – March 31st 2012<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A key figure of the Paris avant-garde in the 1950s and \u201960s, Jes\u00fas Soto (1923\u20132005) is widely recognized for his groundbreaking innovations in color theory, serial composition, and movement in art. Less well-known is the wide range of styles and mediums that he explored early on. Drawing inspiration from optics and serial music, Soto employed repeating geometric forms and superimposed surfaces to convey a sense of physical displacement. In deconstructing the notion of stability, Soto radically transformed the relation between object and audience. Encouraging viewers to interact physically with his work, Soto engages them as active participants in the process of perception.<\/p>\n
Born in the Venezuelan provincial capital of Ciudad Bol\u00edvar, Soto trained at the Escuela de Artes Pl\u00e1sticas y Aplicadas in Caracas. Frustrated with his country\u2019s increasingly repressive environment, he left in 1950\u00a0 for Paris, the adopted home of many Latin American intellectuals and artists, including members of the\u00a0 radical Mad\u00ed group, as well as U.S. artists such as Ellsworth Kelly and Jack Youngerman. In France Soto entered a period of intense activity, exhibiting at the annual Salon des R\u00e9alit\u00e9s Nouvelles alongside other artists of the Parisian avant-garde. At the invitation of Victor Vasarely, Soto participated in the pivotal 1955 exhibition Le Mouvement at the Galerie Denise Ren\u00e9, which boosted the young artist\u2019s reputation in both Europe and Venezuela as an innovator and vital member of the Kinetic movement.<\/p>\n
Focusing on the two decades following Soto\u2019s move to France, the works exhibited here are grouped in five sections, revealing his investigations into new modes of artistic engagement, his contact with European artists Yves Klein, Jean Tinguely, Daniel Spoerri, and the Group Zero, and his anticipation of later conceptual strategies. From his first experiments with \u201cdematerial-ization\u201d to his monumental Penetrables environments of the late 1960s, Soto\u2019s achievements in the fields of perception and interaction during this twenty-year span established him as one of Latin America\u2019s most influential 20th-century artists.<\/p>\n
Soto: Paris and Beyond, 1950\u20131970<\/em> is organized by the Grey Art Gallery, New York University, and curated by Estrellita B. Brodsky. The exhibition is made possible in part by the generous support of Mar\u00eda Graciela and Luis Alfonso Oberto; Mrs. Clarissa Alcock Bronfman; Agnes Gund; Stelac Foundation; National Endowment for the Arts; New York State Council on the Arts; Fundaci\u00f3n Cisneros\/Colecci\u00f3n Patricia Phelps de Cisneros; Christie\u2019s; Haunch of Venison; Mrs. Solita Mishaan; and Susan and Steven Jacobson. The catalogue is sponsored by InterAmericas\u00ae\/Society of Arts and Letters of the Americas, a program of The Reed Foundation. Additional exhibition support is provided by the Grey\u2019s Director\u2019s Circle, Inter\/National Council, and Friends; and the Abby Weed Grey Trust.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vaearts.org\/US\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vaearts.org\/US\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vaearts.org\/US\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vaearts.org\/US\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vaearts.org\/US\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/vaearts.org\/US\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14526,"href":"https:\/\/vaearts.org\/US\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363\/revisions\/14526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vaearts.org\/US\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vaearts.org\/US\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vaearts.org\/US\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}