Oiticica’s series of Spatial Reliefs (Relevos Espaciais, 1959-1961), mark a significant evolution in the artist’s experiments with geometric abstraction, anticipating his turn towards increasingly interactive, environmental works in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Oiticica began working with geometric forms at the age of 15, when he became part of Grupo Frente in Rio de Janeiro. In his Metaesquemas (1957-58), mostly gouache on raw cardboard, Oiticica developed a distinct vocabulary of grid-like structures. These compositions, consisting of brick shapes which appear to jostle against each other in a pressurized grid, reveal the artist’s prescient interest in physicality and movement.
With Spatial Relief Amarelo 22 (1959/2012), it is as if a Meteasquema has broken free from its grid and taken flight. Suspended in air, this gravity-defying work signals two crucial lines of inquiry in Oiticica’s oeuvre. The first is his aim to endow color with its own materiality. In his Spatial Reliefs, Oiticica privileges those colors that are more “open to light, such as white, yellow, orange, luminescent red,” remarking that yellow most closely resembles “physical, terrestrial light.” The second, related aim is the artist’s desire to engage the viewer as an active co-creator of the work. Movement thus becomes the key to understanding color as the material manifestation of light, rather than mere pigment. By hanging his Spatial Reliefs from the ceiling, Oiticica compels the viewer to circumnavigate them, infusing these works with the ever-shifting bodily experiences of time and space.
The artist’s various series from this period, Metaesquemas, Relevos Espaciais, Invenções (Inventions, 1959-62), and Núcleos (Nuclei, 1960-66), all overtly reference science, revealing Oiticica’s orientation towards empiricism, collaboration, and experimental process as essential to the production of meaning in the work of art. These works look forward to his exploration of fully immersive, participatory modes of artistic praxis in later works such as Tropicália (1967), Eden (1968), and Block-Experiments in Cosmococa – program in progress (1973-74).
 

Oiticica’s series of Spatial Reliefs (Relevos Espaciais, 1959-1961), mark a significant evolution in the artist’s experiments with geometric abstraction, anticipating his turn towards increasingly interactive, environmental works in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Oiticica began working with geometric forms at the age of 15, when he became part of Grupo Frente in Rio de Janeiro. In his Metaesquemas (1957-58), mostly gouache on raw cardboard, Oiticica developed a distinct vocabulary of grid-like structures. These compositions, consisting of brick shapes which appear to jostle against each other in a pressurized grid, reveal the artist’s prescient interest in physicality and movement.
With Spatial Relief Amarelo 22 (1959/2012), it is as if a Meteasquema has broken free from its grid and taken flight. Suspended in air, this gravity-defying work signals two crucial lines of inquiry in Oiticica’s oeuvre. The first is his aim to endow color with its own materiality. In his Spatial Reliefs, Oiticica privileges those colors that are more “open to light, such as white, yellow, orange, luminescent red,” remarking that yellow most closely resembles “physical, terrestrial light.” The second, related aim is the artist’s desire to engage the viewer as an active co-creator of the work. Movement thus becomes the key to understanding color as the material manifestation of light, rather than mere pigment. By hanging his Spatial Reliefs from the ceiling, Oiticica compels the viewer to circumnavigate them, infusing these works with the ever-shifting bodily experiences of time and space.
The artist’s various series from this period, Metaesquemas, Relevos Espaciais, Invenções (Inventions, 1959-62), and Núcleos (Nuclei, 1960-66), all overtly reference science, revealing Oiticica’s orientation towards empiricism, collaboration, and experimental process as essential to the production of meaning in the work of art. These works look forward to his exploration of fully immersive, participatory modes of artistic praxis in later works such as Tropicália (1967), Eden (1968), and Block-Experiments in Cosmococa – program in progress (1973-74).
 

Oiticica’s series of Spatial Reliefs (Relevos Espaciais, 1959-1961), mark a significant evolution in the artist’s experiments with geometric abstraction, anticipating his turn towards increasingly interactive, environmental works in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Oiticica began working with geometric forms at the age of 15, when he became part of Grupo Frente in Rio de Janeiro. In his Metaesquemas (1957-58), mostly gouache on raw cardboard, Oiticica developed a distinct vocabulary of grid-like structures. These compositions, consisting of brick shapes which appear to jostle against each other in a pressurized grid, reveal the artist’s prescient interest in physicality and movement.
With Spatial Relief Amarelo 22 (1959/2012), it is as if a Meteasquema has broken free from its grid and taken flight. Suspended in air, this gravity-defying work signals two crucial lines of inquiry in Oiticica’s oeuvre. The first is his aim to endow color with its own materiality. In his Spatial Reliefs, Oiticica privileges those colors that are more “open to light, such as white, yellow, orange, luminescent red,” remarking that yellow most closely resembles “physical, terrestrial light.” The second, related aim is the artist’s desire to engage the viewer as an active co-creator of the work. Movement thus becomes the key to understanding color as the material manifestation of light, rather than mere pigment. By hanging his Spatial Reliefs from the ceiling, Oiticica compels the viewer to circumnavigate them, infusing these works with the ever-shifting bodily experiences of time and space.
The artist’s various series from this period, Metaesquemas, Relevos Espaciais, Invenções (Inventions, 1959-62), and Núcleos (Nuclei, 1960-66), all overtly reference science, revealing Oiticica’s orientation towards empiricism, collaboration, and experimental process as essential to the production of meaning in the work of art. These works look forward to his exploration of fully immersive, participatory modes of artistic praxis in later works such as Tropicália (1967), Eden (1968), and Block-Experiments in Cosmococa – program in progress (1973-74).
 

Oiticica’s series of Spatial Reliefs (Relevos Espaciais, 1959-1961), mark a significant evolution in the artist’s experiments with geometric abstraction, anticipating his turn towards increasingly interactive, environmental works in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Oiticica began working with geometric forms at the age of 15, when he became part of Grupo Frente in Rio de Janeiro. In his Metaesquemas (1957-58), mostly gouache on raw cardboard, Oiticica developed a distinct vocabulary of grid-like structures. These compositions, consisting of brick shapes which appear to jostle against each other in a pressurized grid, reveal the artist’s prescient interest in physicality and movement.
With Spatial Relief Amarelo 22 (1959/2012), it is as if a Meteasquema has broken free from its grid and taken flight. Suspended in air, this gravity-defying work signals two crucial lines of inquiry in Oiticica’s oeuvre. The first is his aim to endow color with its own materiality. In his Spatial Reliefs, Oiticica privileges those colors that are more “open to light, such as white, yellow, orange, luminescent red,” remarking that yellow most closely resembles “physical, terrestrial light.” The second, related aim is the artist’s desire to engage the viewer as an active co-creator of the work. Movement thus becomes the key to understanding color as the material manifestation of light, rather than mere pigment. By hanging his Spatial Reliefs from the ceiling, Oiticica compels the viewer to circumnavigate them, infusing these works with the ever-shifting bodily experiences of time and space.
The artist’s various series from this period, Metaesquemas, Relevos Espaciais, Invenções (Inventions, 1959-62), and Núcleos (Nuclei, 1960-66), all overtly reference science, revealing Oiticica’s orientation towards empiricism, collaboration, and experimental process as essential to the production of meaning in the work of art. These works look forward to his exploration of fully immersive, participatory modes of artistic praxis in later works such as Tropicália (1967), Eden (1968), and Block-Experiments in Cosmococa – program in progress (1973-74).