Announcing Lisson Gallery's participation in TEFAF Online 2020
28 October 2020
Lisson Gallery is pleased to announce its participation in TEFAF Online this autumn. In a focused presentation, available to explore online from 1–4 November, Lisson will feature one oil on canvas work from the significant Metaesquemas series by Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica. This virtual fair runs concurrently with the major dual-site exhibition ‘Hélio Oiticica’ at Lisson Gallery’s New York exhibition spaces, on view through 12 December.
In his time as a key member of the Rio de Janeiro-based Grupo Frente in the mid-1950s, Oiticica’s radical play with geometric form and vibrant colors transcended the minimal lines of the European constructivism he was influenced by, and imbued his work with an exuberant rhythm that resonated with the avant-garde music and poetry of Brazil. Between 1956–58, the artist would create several hundred Metaesquema paintings that expressed his increased consideration of physical space, and the possible translation of shapes in the two-dimensional plane into three-dimensional experiences.
The majority of the Metaesquemas were gouache on raw cardboard. Of the six Oiticica painted in oil on canvas, only four survive and only this example, Metaesquema (1958), is rendered in the vertical. About this particular work, historian and curator, Lynn Zelevansky, writes: “A vertical line or space – it can be read as either and flips back and forth – divides the canvas in half. There are seven rectangles on each side of the line; and on each side, unbroken rectangles alternate with rectangles that are divided at one end, leaving a square shape close to the center line. The left side has four whole rectangles and three divided ones, a pattern that is reversed on the right. On the left the squares don’t move at all, only the rectangles tilt slightly, alternating left and right corners. On the right side, the squares tilt in a livelier manner and the rectangles remain still. There is the sense that this Metaesquema could fold along the center line, suggesting a move toward three dimensions.”
Find further information on TEFAF Online here.
