Electric Op

Friday, September 27, 2024–Monday, January 27, 2025

Jeffrey E. Gundlach Building
Floor 1

In the mid-1960s, a new movement called “Op” (short for “Optical”) art took the world by storm. These dizzying, dazzling artworks embodied the energy of the emerging Space Age: Op painters used electric colors and machine-like precision to make geometric patterns that seem to vibrate or move, while Op sculptors utilized new, futuristic materials such as Plexiglas and aluminum. Some created mechanical and electronic sculptures that actually do move, including many that use kinetic light. As art critic John Canaday wrote in 1965, Op artworks are “the only objects being created today, as art, that can compete with launching pads and industrial machinery as expressions of the character unique to our civilization.”

Electric Op is the first major exhibition to examine how the Op art of the 1960s and 1970s related to not only industrial machinery, but also the new electronic media of the dawning post-industrial era. At the very moment that Op artists began making works that short-circuit our optical systems, new video and digital technologies began reformatting the nature of images and how we see. Could it be more than coincidental that the undulating lines of Op art resemble electronic video signals, or that its grids suggest the pixilated structure of digital screens? In fact, many Op artists would turn to using these technologies, some as early as the late 1960s, while at the same time, many of the first video and digital artists openly turned to Op art for inspiration. In this way, Op art became more than just the final chapter of modernist geometric abstraction; it was also the first artistic movement of the global Information Age, heralding the transformation of vision from a mode of embodied perception to an algorithmic process executed by the computer systems that produce and process images today.

François Morellet (French, 1926–2016). *Random distribution of 20% squares, superimposed 5 times while rotating in the centre*, 1970. Oil on canvas. 63 × 63 inches (160 × 160 cm). Collection Musée d'arts de Nantes. © Musée d'arts de Nantes, photo. : C. Clos

A. Michael Noll (American, born 1939). *Ninety Parallel Sinusoids with Linearly Increasing Period*, 1964. Computer-generated image. Presentation format and dimensions variable. Collection Buffalo AKG Art Museum. Gift of A. Michael Noll, 2023. (P2023:95).

Francis Michael Celentano (American, 1928–2016).  *Kinetic Painting III*, 1967.  Acrylic on Masonite with motor. Diameter: 48 inches (121.9 cm). Collection Buffalo AKG Art Museum. Gift of Seymour H. Knox, Jr., 1968 (K1968:8).

Francisco Sobrino  (Spanish, 1932–2014).  *Structure permutationnelle (Permutational Structure)*, 1963–66 . Plexiglas.  43 1⁄4 × 11 3⁄4 × 11 1⁄2 inches (109.9 × 29.8 × 29.2 cm). Edition 1/3 . Collection Buffalo AKG Art Museum. Gift of Seymour H. Knox, Jr., 1969 (K1969:1).

Four still images from Stan VanDerBeek (American, 1927–1984). *Moirage*, 1967. 16mm film (color, sound), digitized. Running time: 9 minutes, 21 seconds. Soundtrack: Paul Motian. Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix and the Estate of Stan VanDerBeek

Four still images of Gary Hill (American, born 1951 ). *Black/White/Text*, 1980. Analog video (black and white, stereo sound), digitized. Running time: 7 minutes.  Edition 7/30 + 5 artist’s proofs. Collection Buffalo AKG Art Museum. George B. and Jenny R. Matthews Fund, 2024 (2024:1).

Still image from JODI (Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans)  [Active in the Netherlands, founded 1994 (Dutch, born 1968; Belgian, born 1965)]. *Untitled Game (CTRL-Space)*, 1999. Hacked digital game shown on projector with speakers and gamepad.  Courtesy of the artists.

Leo Villareal (American, born 1967). Double Scramble, 2013. Generative custom software, LEDs, computer, circuitry, painted wood, and Plexiglas. 37 1⁄2 × 73 1⁄2 × 3 3⁄4 inches (95.2 × 186.7 × 9.5 cm). Collection Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation.

Laura Splan (American, born 1973). *Squint*, 2016. Cotton and computerized Jacquard weave. 68 × 52 15/16 inches (172.7 × 134.2 cm). Collection Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation.

Rafaël Rozendaal (Dutch-Brazilian, active in the United States, born 1980). *Abstract Browsing*, 2014. Chrome browser extension shown on interactive computer. Courtesy the artist.

Drawing on the Buffalo AKG’s leading collection of Op art—established with the museum’s ground-breaking 1965 exhibition Art Today: Kinetic and Optic—Electric Op brings together over 100 artworks by nearly ninety artists to trace the six-decade history of the enduring relationship between Op art and electronic art and culture. Dynamic paintings, sculptures, and prints by international Op artists working in the 1960s and 1970s are placed into dialogue with analog videos and computer-generated prints and films of the same period, demonstrating how Op became “Electric.” The exhibition also includes more recent contemporary artworks from the 1980s onward that embody the sensibility of “Electric Op,” including paintings, sculptures of programmed lights, and even an interactive digital game. The exhibition concludes with a presentation of vintage ephemera and other cultural artifacts; together, these show how Op art even shaped what electronic technology looks like in our popular imagination.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a large-format, bilingual (English/French) catalog published by Giles, featuring full-page illustrations of nearly a hundred sensational works, including many that are rarely seen or reproduced. It also includes a major overview essay by the exhibition’s curator; three newly commissioned essays on Op art, the relationship between art and science, and computer graphics by leading scholars of these topics; and an anthology of writings by artists in the exhibition that address the relationship between abstraction and technology.

Gradient blue to purple pixel artwork — Francis Michael Celentano (American, 1928–2016). *Gradient Electra 5*, 1992. Acrylic on canvas. 30 × 80 inches (76.2 × 203.2 cm). Collection Buffalo AKG Art Museum. Gift of Rebecca Celentano, widow of Francis Celentano, 2023 (2023:217).

Participating Artists

Yoshiyuki Abe, Yaacov Agam, Josef Albers, Richard Joseph Anuszkiewicz, Cory Arcangel, Kim Asendorf, Stephen Beck, Max Bill, Martha Boto, Angela Bulloch, Francis Michael Celentano, Computer Technique Group, Analívia Cordeiro, Douglas Coupland, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Larry Cuba, Hans Dehlinger, Hugo Demarco, Herbert W. Franke, Naum Gabo, Karl Gerstner, Aldo Giorgini, Peter Halley, Frederick Hammersley, Jean-Pierre Hébert, Al Held, Gary Hill, JODI, Robert D. Johnson (from the Basic Design Studio of William Huff), Eduardo Kac, Hiroshi Kawano, Ken Knowlton, William J. Kolomyjec, Leroy Lamis, Ruth Leavitt, Julio Le Parc, Josef Levi, LIA, LoVid, Al Loving, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Eduardo Mac Entyre, Heinz Mack, Jean-Claude Marquette, Rosa Menkman, Manfred Mohr, Vera Molnar, Francois Morellet, Rhea Myers, Monique Nahas and Hervé Huitric, Frieder Nake, Georg Nees, A. Michael Noll, Ara Peterson, Casey Reas, Bridget Riley, Antonio Roberts, Kristen Roos, Rafaël Rozendaal, Jason Salavon, Miriam Schapiro, Nicolas Schöffer, Lillian F. Schwartz, Ix Shells (Itzel Yard), Laura Splan, Francisco Sobrino, Jesús Rafael Soto, Julian Stanczak, Jen Stark, Lloyd Sumner, Zdenek Sýkora, Paul Talman, Daniel Temkin, Luis Tomasello, Joan Truckenbrod, Livinus and Jeep van de Bundt, Stan VanDerBeek, Victor Vasarely, Steina and Woody Vasulka, Miguel Ángel Vidal, Leo Villareal, Bill Viola, Marius Watz, John Whitney, Jean-Pierre Yvaral, Edward Zajec, Anton Zöttl.

This exhibition is curated by former Buffalo AKG Art Museum Curator Tina Rivers Ryan and is co-organized by the Buffalo AKG Art Museum and the Musée d'arts de Nantes, where it will be on view from April 4 to September 1, 2025.