For his second participation in Frieze NY, the gallery will present a collection of exceptional works by François Morellet, dating from 1961 to 1986, on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the artist, born April 30, 1926, and with which are maintained, since its creation in 1989, privileged relationships.
This project, specially developed for the Spotlight sector, aims to show, from an original angle, aspects unknown in the United States of two phases of François Morellet’s work: the first, systematic and minimal, second order kinetic or rather not to restrict it to an appellation, of unstable order because to introduce perturbations.
This is the case with a Sphere-Trame (1962), a suspended sculpture that simplifies the vision of the spectator, who no longer has to go around it to determine the best point of view but just to turn it on itself, of a Wire with wave motion (1965), winding on itself according to the laws of physics or even with the neon piece 4 interfering rhythms forming a square (1972), without forgetting a fantastic vibratory wallpaper that will deploy all both on the walls and on the floor of the stand, a random distribution of thousands of blue and red squares, made from the decimals of the number π and whose very first version was created in 1963 for the 3rd Paris Biennale.
The introduction of randomness, pre-established systems resembling rules of play and limiting subjective decisions to the maximum, along with the use of non-artistic materials, allowed François Morellet, from the beginning of the years 1950, to question the status of the work of art by eliminating almost all that one usually seeks, figuration, spontaneity, sensitivity, ego: “First of all, What is a work of art? Obviously, for a given spectator, what this viewer considers as such. […] Plastic arts must enable the viewer to find what he wants, that is to say, what he himself brings. Works of art are picnic spots, Spanish inns where one consumes what one brings oneself “(François Morellet, 1971).
This collection of works for Frieze New York will begin in 1961 with another random distribution of 40,000 squares, this time in the form of a painting that springs from the famous painting of 1960, now preserved by the MoMA, will stop in 1986 with two little-known works of the Early Figure series, just one year after the retrospective exhibition that the Brooklyn Museum devoted to the French artist.
Frieze NY 2016 The Art Newspaper Interview