BRIDGET RILEY – MEASURE FOR MEASURE
2017-11-06The exhibition focuses upon Bridget Riley’s most recent works, the Disc series. Two wall paintings and eight canvases with muted colours will be on view.
Internationally acclaimed artist Bridget Riley has radically pursued an inquiry into the constituent elements of painting for over 50 years, exploring the active role of perception in art. The British artist started her experimentations at the very beginning of the 1960s with a series of black and white paintings in which she ingenuously arranged elementary abstract shapes – such as circles, curves, stripes – so as to create a feeling of depth and movement that would cause disorientation to the viewer’s eye.
In 1965, Riley was invited to show her work along with Joseph Albers, Max Bill, Enrico Castellani, Robert Irwin, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Ad Reinhardt and other artists in The Responsive Eye, a major exhibition that was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The event led to instant international recognition of her optical focus. The artist never claimed to be part of any group. During Op Art’s greatest success in the mid-1960s, Riley stressed the originality of her process that had no direct link with science. Not long afterwards, she started to explore the properties of colours. Influenced by Cézanne and Seurat, her works can be seen as the outcome of these masters’ concerns. Her paintings seem to flicker, to pulsate and to convey an internal life.
Opposite – Wall painting A (title to follow), 2017
Exhibition runs through to November 25th, 2017
Galerie Max Hetzler
57, rue du Temple
75004 Paris
