Lygia ClarkBy Lyra Kilston, Quinn Latimer
Published: July 1, 2008
Aug. 5 – Sept. 21 Central to pioneering artist Lygia Clark's work was the relationship between the object and the viewer — she often included signs reading PLEASE TOUCH near her works. This summer, the Centro Cultural is mounting the largest retrospective of Clark's work in her native Brazil in the past 10 years, exhibiting 150 pieces from four decades of spirited production and 35 replicas for viewers to touch and interact with (breaking down the mantle of preciousness that her now-historic works have acquired). Clark's commitment to fearlessly challenging the tropes and conventions of art made her a groundbreaking radical, from her alignment with the Brazilian Neo-concrete group, whose 1959 manifesto stated that painting no longer needed to remain within the frame, to her early 1960s Bichos, aluminum sculptures that moved in response to viewers' interaction. By the late 1960s, her interests had migrated toward the body, with installations that invoked processes of ovulation, fertilization, and birth — she was strongly bound to sexual metaphors of creation. Muddying the usual art-historical timelines, Clark's work remains fresh and surprising, and her writings on art and life are a blaze of invigorating declarations. Her diary entries and letters to critics, artists, and friends, never before published, will be included in the exhibition's catalogue, promising to further illuminate the artist's inner world. "Lygia Clark" originally appeared in the July/August 2008 issue of Modern Painters. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Modern Painters' July/August 2008 Table of Contents.
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