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Electric Op

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

Installation view of Electric Op. Photo: Brenda Bieger, Buffalo AKG Art Museum

Please note: Electric Op contains many artworks with intense optical effects and illusions that may cause vertigo, migraine, or nausea. The show is not recommended for anyone with photosensitive epilepsy (PSE) or severe vertigo.
 

Jeffrey E. Gundlach Building
Floor 1

In the 1960s, electronic media began reformatting the nature of images and how we see. Unlike static paintings or sculptures, video and digital images are dynamic and interactive, made of abstract patterns of information that are manipulated, stored, and shared as electronic signals or numerical bits of data.

At the very same moment, an emerging movement called “Op” (short for “Optical”) took art and popular culture by storm. Op artists use abstract patterns to create optical illusions that are dynamic and interactive, much like the electronic images of the time. Could it be more than coincidental that the curves of Op art resemble electronic video signals, or that its grids suggest pixilated digital pictures? In fact, Op art emerged at the same time as video and digital art, and many Op artists would turn to using these technologies, just as many pioneering video and digital artists turned to Op art for inspiration.

Bringing together more than ninety works spanning six decades, Electric Op examines how artists have used abstraction to explore the relationship between perception and technology. While today considered an art historical “dead end” with few echoes in contemporary art, Op art in fact became the first artistic movement of the Information Age, paving the way for art to be abstracted into analog and digital circuits. Just as optical illusions help us “see” ourselves in the act of seeing, Op art can help us see how vision itself has been transformed by electronic media.

Installation view of Electric Op. Photo: Brenda Bieger, Buffalo AKG Art Museum

Installation view of Electric Op. Photo: Brenda Bieger, Buffalo AKG Art Museum

Installation view of Electric Op. Photo: Brenda Bieger, Buffalo AKG Art Museum

Installation view of Electric Op. Photo: Brenda Bieger, Buffalo AKG Art Museum

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.

Sponsors

Electric Op is made possible through the generosity of the Generative Art Fund and the National Endowment for the Arts, with additional support provided by the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation.

The Generative Art Fund
National Endowment for the Arts

Original logo designed by Melanie Mues.