Signalisations III. François Morellet

Morellet is regarded as one of the most important representatives of concrete art that was based on the constructivist roots of post-war abstract tendencies. In 1961 he was a co-founder of the Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel (GRAV), a French association whose members reevaluated the relationship between art and technology from a communal perspective. In his systematically constructed works, which are mostly based on mathematical algorithms, we can witness the interchange between two diametrically opposed aesthetic conceptions: the sterile, simplified formal vocabulary of mechanically reproduced industrial objects, and the random, apparently spontaneous way in which these objects are presented in close proximity in space. Morellet employs a number of solutions that avoid conventional “materials”, one of which is his experimental use of sources of artificial light. His neon installations, composed according to complex visual rhythms which direct the viewer’s sight and rely on the intensity of the light to create space, are exquisite, lyrical examples of his interest in the dematerialisation of objects.