Galeria Inox

The career of Antonio Asis (Buenos Aires, 1932 – Paris, 2019) encapsulates the history of Op and Kinetic Art, of which he was a leading exponent. Upon arriving in Paris in 1956 directly from the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes in his native Buenos Aires, Asis immediately connected with artists who had participated in the landmark “Le Mouvement” (The Movement) exhibition at Galerie Denise René the previous year. At the same time, he felt compelled to move beyond the traditional language of geometric abstraction and, driven by an intuition regarding the vibratory structure of the universe, break free from the constraints of fixed and immutable form.

His major breakthrough came when, like his friend Jesús Rafael Soto, he adopted a system of superimposed grids, resulting in his first vibratory relief, “Linéaire” (Linear) ,1956. From that moment on, the central theme of his work was established. It involved metal screens with two or three different types of perforation layered over grids whose regular geometric forms dissolved into bursts of light whenever the viewer walked past them: the shapes disintegrated into luminous particles, with matter transforming into energy.

If vibration is the true immaterial structure of the universe, then the interaction, interference, contrast, and harmony of colors are its visible manifestation. Asis conducted his investigations through a series of smaller works produced almost daily in his Paris studio. Grids that seemed to weave color, featuring concentric circles forming pulsating targets or radiating from multiple centers, bear witness to his spirit of systematic research and a mindset proudly indifferent to the mundane aspects of creativity. Beyond the diversity of these series, the resulting hundreds of works shared a common goal: to explore what Asis called the “vibrational structure” of color, asserting chromatic movement as a preeminent force and a manifestation of universal dynamism transmitted to the viewer through retinal stimulation.

Arnauld Pierre
Source: The artist’s official website