4 Self-Distorting Grids
1965
4 aluminum grids, iron poles, motors
61 3/4 x 61 3/4 in. (157 x 157 cm) each
Fundación Museo de Arte Moderno Jesus Soto, Ciudad Bolivar, Venezuelan
Between 1960 and 1968 François Morellet was a member of Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel (GRAV), a group of artists working in France who utilized scientific concepts and methodologies in their work and experimented with electronic media, systems, and chance. Since the early 1950s Morellet had explored the grid, a form that organized the picture plane systematically and nonhierarchically, negating the need for traditional composition. In 4 Self-Distorting Grids he combined his early interest in systems for art making with GRAV's mandate to explore movement and new media. Four large motorized grids on poles shift and change, creating a mechanized, abstract electronic ballet. GRAV also produced collaborative large-scale environments; consistent with that interest, these mutating grids, a kind of forest of moving parts, are more than seven feet tall.
