At the Howard Wise Gallery Julio Le Parc makes his solo debut in America after an earlier appearance here with the “Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel.” His present showing is a series of mobiles and constructions that makes much use of mechanization and intricate lighting effects. These works depend to varying degrees on random movements produced by the intermittent action of a motorized element on different kinds of movable parts. Several of the pieces suggest gadget-games like vertical Japanese pinball machines. Jeu Visuel: Rouge-Bleu is a circular wall-mounted box containing two ping-pong balls, rouge et bleu. Now and then a short rectangular shaft at the bottom spins rapidly, sending the ping-pong balls into frantic caroming leaps and collisions behind the plexiglass face of the box. After a while it stops, only to start up again unnervingly a moment or two after one has moved on. A larger horizontally mounted version of this idea contains not less than seventeen ping-pong balls.
Not all of the pieces actually move: Relief a Images Alternes is a stretch of vertical reflecting sheets tilted first one way and then another along their horizontal axes. A stroll past this configuration provides a series of shimmering and bobbing reflections too small and stylish for a real fun house.
Le Parc’s interest in what might be termed “programmed randomness” comes out in his Ensemble d’Activation. It is an octopartite box containing in its various compartments such elements as celluloid hoops on a rod, a reflecting disc given a 100 degree bend, a thin vertical strip banded across with narrow black and white lines and mounted in front of an identically striped background, and so forth. Eight push-button switches mounted conveniently before the piece allow one to strum at the console, activating the different compartmented elements. As the switches are set in an order altogether different from that of the boxed parts, whatever starts rattling and whirling, blinking or bouncing is always a surprise . . . for a while.
Perhaps more ingratiating is a series of works titled Continue! Lumiere 1, 2, and so on. With the help of concealed light sources these works project reflections either on the wall or within the pieces themselves by means of the light released through pierced metal screens, bounced off tiny spring-mounted mirrors, or intermittently flashing through constricted apertures onto varied reflecting surfaces. The complex Continue! Lumiere 3 makes bleeding runs of color visible in angled mirrors and through ingeniously mounted glasses within a square box hung on the bias. A concealed rotating color disc provides the play of images.
Le Parc’s work is concerned with the relatively free play of visual phenomena possible within the variety of his inventions. These effects are diverting and handsome enough to compensate for the gimmicks required to bring them about. In this show none of the perceptions offered is, however, so novel or momentous as to constitute a major artistic revelation. But this is of course beside the point. They are “jeux”: interesting and attractive, elegant and cool, whimsical without wit. Nor are they pretentious. Their easy charm is civilized and very European, without the tiresome pedantry that is the hallmark of mediocre optical-phenomena art today. Le Parc’s unassuming works cannot fail to delight and satisfy all those who fancy that perception apart from feeling is a taste as well as a philosophy.
—Dennis Adrian
