This essay by British curator and art critic Guy Brett (b. 1942) is the introduction to the catalogue published on the occasion of Soto, the exhibition of work by Jesús Rafael Soto (1923–2005) held at the Marlborough-Gerson gallery in New York in 1969. Starting in the sixties, Brett was closely connected to the development of Kinetic art in Europe and Latin America. He curated major international shows of Kinetic art such as In Motion y Force Fields: Phases of the Kinetic and wrote criticism of many others. In this introduction, Brett cites a text of his own authorship published in an issue of Signals News Bulletin, edited by Filipino artist David Medalla, dedicated solely to Jesús Rafael Soto on the occasion of his solo show at the Signals Gallery in London directed by Paul Keeler. According to Brett, one of Soto’s most important contributions to contemporary art is making elements that are not “real” appear to be. Neither the vibration nor the movement in Soto’s work “really” happens; “in reality” the lines do not dissolve. In fact, none of those components so central to the work exists on the material plane; the work ensues, rather, in the viewer’s [optical] perception, which becomes an essential element of it. Brett provides a fairly exhaustive analysis of the optical mechanisms used by Soto, attempting to decipher their meaning and importance. The fact that the elements fluctuate between the material and the imaginary plane is, for Brett, worthy of admiration, as is the artist’s total liberation from academicism when he declares that he intends no form, not even geometric ones, to play a role in his work.
For other texts on Soto, see Alfredo Boulton’s “Jesús Soto 1971” (ICAA digital archive doc. no. 1059661) and “El cinetismo de Soto” (doc. no. 1069749); Ariel Jiménez’s “Jesus Soto: lo visible y lo posible” (doc. no. 1073684); Alejandro Otero’s “Las Estructuras cinéticas de Jesús Soto” (doc. no. 850667); Guillermo Meneses’s “Soto” (doc. no. 1080690); the untitled essay in the catalogue to the exhibition Vibrations by Soto held at The Kootz Gallery in 1965 (doc. no. 1069781); Roberto Guevara’s “La energia como realidad” (doc. no. 1102332); Vladimir Tismaneanu’s “La metafísica del espacio en la obra de Soto” (doc. no. 1101524); an interview by Roberto Guevara entitled “La nueva lectura de la realidad: Una conversación con el maestro Jesús Soto” (doc. no. 1059731) and an interview by Daniel Abadie entitled “Entrevista a Soto” (doc. no. 1101540); and Carlos Contramaestre’s “Soto, una poética vibratoria del espacio y su habitabilidad” (doc. no. 1102301).