Raquel Arnaud Gallery is pleased to participate in the 2019 Condo edition hosting Mor Charpentier with the artist Alexander Apóstol in dialogue with Carlos Cruz-Diez, represented by Raquel Arnaud Gallery since 1988.

Taking as a starting point kinetic art, developed especially by Venezuelan artists in Paris in the 1960s, the exhibition Contrato Colectivo Cromosaturado puts two artists in dialogue through different perspectives.

The kinetic art was highly receptive in Vezezuela in the 1960s, which was experiencing a new cultural moment accompanied by intense industrialization and urbanization due to oil exports. These artists were associated with technological advances and the Venezuelan government was a strong supporter of the movement, having even commissioned several works.

After a period characterized by the multiplication of modernist architectural designs (with Le Corbusier as the main model), the 1960s saw the transformation of many façades and interiors throughout Venezuela through the large-scale integration of kinetic art into everyday life and into public spaces. Its vivid colors and geometric shapes changed the perception of space for passersby and public area workers, who in turn became performers of such works.

Carlos Cruz-Diez, born in 1923 and based in Paris since 1960, is one of the precursors of this movement. His research revolves around the chromatic phenomenon perceived as an autonomous reality, where the spectator participates actively in the work through the changes of color and shape that occur according to the movement of this same spectator. Two Physichromies (the artist's best-known work series) will be exhibited at the show, one of them from 1969, in addition to an installation of the Transchromie series.

Alexander Apóstole, comes from another generation of Venezuelan artists. Born in 1969, he lives between Caracas and Madrid. In some series of his works, the artist researches the development and the inheritance of kinetic art in his country of origin. In the video Contrato Colectivo Cromosaturado, divided into six chapters, the principles of kinetic art are illustrated through different visual references. In the series Political Lessons, Apóstole creates a visual narrative in which he uses the colors of different political parties that have alternated in the power since 1941.

From the production of two stablished artists, whose works are in collections like Tate Modern, London; Center Pompidou, Paris; Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; National Museum Reina Sofia Art Center, Madrid; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Daros Collection, Switzerland, among many others, the exhibition Contrato Colectivo Cromosaturado presents a narrative about the construction of kinetic art concomitantly to a strong urban development from the modernist precepts. This process is a crossroads with the history of several other Latin American countries.