In this essay about the sculptures produced by the Venezuelan painter and sculptor Alejandro Otero (1921–90) to be installed in urban spaces, Víctor Guédez systematizes the artist’s concerns, problems, and solutions. Offering more than just a retrospective review, the critic examines the works and identifies the resources and variables that Otero was faced with in this project. He reveals the artist’s understanding of movement and space as tangible realities, and of the need to imagine and create an “environment” as a precondition for the creation of the work. As Guédez points out, the landscape is an essential condition for the installation, whereas the environment’s interaction with the sculpture suggests an operational capacity in the realm of experience. One way or another, Otero combines the concept of a sculpture in situ with its inevitable social implications in an urban space in the city.
In his essay, Guédez sheds light on Otero’s contributions in terms of a reconfiguration of the landscape by means of a kinetic intervention, while identifying specific categories for understanding proposals of this nature. These categories are necessary, since they abandon the traditional sculpture experience in order to develop an expanded field involving the actual viewers as well as the surrounding natural elements. At this point, Guédez reclaims the notion of totality, a concept that had been revitalized at the time the essay was written thanks to technological progress and its ongoing possibilities.