MASP

Considered a pioneer of kinetic art, Abraham Palatnik lived in Tel Aviv, Israel as a child before returning to Brazil in 1948. In the 1950s he began to experiment, initially with chromatic associations, light fields and movement. His work pioneered the use of artificial light sources and the exploration of their effects and particularities, such as dynamism, fluidity, irradiation and refraction. Geometric strictness is a crucial aspect of his work, functioning as a critical resource of spatial organization in his compositions. Beginning in the 1960s, Palatnik dedicated himself to what he termed kinetic objects. This stage of his career shifted the movement of the object to viewers, encouraging them to experience his work from several perspectives. Palatnik’s works also depend primarily on the environment’s lighting conditions. Both gaze and light participate directly in the construction dynamic of shapes in his three-dimensional objects. In his search for kinetic components intrinsic to the nature of materials, Palatnik researched several media. First, he investigated the plastic features of wood grains. Later on, he used cardboard, as in Untitled [Untitled] (1980). In this piece, instead of using the cardboard’s surface, Palatnik overlapped several sheets to create an agglomerate that he then cut on top to create irregular curves that run to the frame. These progressive reliefs reveal a certain sinuousness and well-constructed rhythms.

— Guilherme Giufrida, assistant curator, MASP, 2018

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