Le Parc Lumière. Obras cinéticas de Julio Le Parc / Kinetic works by Julio Le Parc

Le Parc Lumière focused on one of the most important aspects of Julio Le Parc's work: his preoccupation with changing light. Together, the more than forty pieces in this exhibition, mostly dating from the 1960s, formed one great symphony of moving light.

In 1958 Julio Le Parc (*1928) moved from Argentina to Paris, where he is still based today. The political and social upheavals of the 1960s provided fertile soil on which to develop a wide-ranging oeuvre. Over the years he has gradually gained international recognition, culminating in the Grand Prize for Painting awarded to him at the 1966 Venice Biennale.

Also in the 1960s Julio Le Parc and his fellow members of the Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel (GRAV) broke radically with artistic convention: they rejected static images in favor of dynamism to create works of constant flux and eliminate the possibility of fixed viewpoints. The animated play of light in his lumino-kinetic pieces transforms space, constantly dissolving and recreating it, and making the viewer an integral part of a Gesamtkunstwerk.

Le Parc’s kinetic works resist specific interpretation – as is his intention. Far from imposing a particular view on his observer-participants, Le Parc seeks to grant them greater self-determination. The profoundly human character and political dimension of his work lie in the rigorous eschewal of absolute claims. Le Parc’s art is free, democratic, full of respect for humanity, anti-authoritarian, and averse to the cult of genius.