Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1484758
T here's a new frequency vibrating through the Dallas Art Museum, and it's coming from a single room that's impossible to ignore. "Movement: The Legacy of Kineticism." engages your childlike wonder and invites you to your own tête-à-tête with the art. You'll find yourself instinctively walking towards a sea of overhead lights, eager to tug on the hanging chains that illuminate the bulbs. The 2010 installation Vagalume (Firefly) by Brazilian artist Valeska Soares is the doorway into a world of immersive sculptures, objects, and projections spanning the early 20th century through the present day. All 80 works in the exhibition are from the museum's collection and are organized to highlight the use of physical space and individual perception in art. American artist Ricci Albenda's 2007 video projection Panning Annex (Albert), which features a 360-degree optical illusion that seemingly changes the depth of the gallery room, destabilizes your take on reality. Icelandic- Danish artist Olafur Eliasson experiments with the viewer's role in deducing images and creating meaning in his 2008 work The outside of inside. While thinking through the exhibition's concept, Dr. Anna Katherine Brodbeck, Good Vibrations The Dallas Art Museum's exhibition "Movement: The Legacy of Kineticism" traces the history of kinetic art and puts the viewer at the center of its creation. By Dani Grande DALLAS MUSEUM OF ART, © FRIEDRICH BECKER Hoffman Family Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, found that these contemporary artists were influenced by earlier movements that used mechanical or manipulable parts to explore how art dissolves into daily life. "In general, there has been a trend of late for art to be more immersive," Brodbeck says. "I think it's important to keep in mind how deep these roots are in art history, and the fact that even artists like [Piet] Mondrian were deeply interested in eliminating the divide between the pictorial space and the space of the viewer." On display is Mondrian's 1921 Composition with Large Blue Plane, Red, Black, Yellow, and Gray, which explores rhythm and motion in painting through the positioning of stripped-down colors and shapes. Nothing is stagnant in this exhibition. The present and the past are in constant conversation, much as the art is with the audience: One relies on the other for completion. "Movement: The Legacy of Kineticism," at the Dallas Museum of Art through July 16, 2023, dma.org. Friedrich Becker's Kinetic Double Finger Ring, 1988 Above from top: Piet Mondrian's Composition with Large Blue Plane, Red, Black, Yellow, and Gray, 1921. Olafur Eliasson's The outside of inside, 2008. DALLAS MUSEUM OF ART DALLAS MUSEUM OF ART, PHOTO CHAD REDMON 34