赫蘇斯·拉斐爾·索托 | PERROTIN

Jesús Rafael Soto was born in Venezuela in 1923. He trained at art school in Caracas and came to Paris in 1950, which remained his base until his death in 2005.
In 1955 Soto participated in Le mouvement (The Movement) at Galerie Denise René, the exhibition that effectively launched Kinetic art. During the same decade, he began making linear, kinetic constructions using industrial and synthetic materials such as nylon, Perspex, steel, and industrial paint. Major exhibitions of Soto’s work took place at Signals Gallery, London (1965); Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1971); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1974); and Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (1979). For each of these exhibitions, Soto used swaying nylon thread or plastic string to turn the gallery space into an all-encompassing, kinetic installation, in which the experience of the spectator within the constructed environment was central to the work’s meaning. Soto’s sculptures and environments often play with the juxtaposition of solid and void, deliberately unsettling the act of viewing by blurring the distinction between reality and illusion.

© The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation