The French curator Hélène Lassalle reviews Penetrables by the Venezuelan artist Jesús Rafael Soto (1923–2005), and discusses her perceptions on a tactile level, after observing how viewers react when faced with such works. Lassalle outlines a phenomenological and psychoanalytical reading of the work, watching viewers enter into them, become part of it, and therefore, experience a variety of feelings provoked by their environment.

Jesús Rafael Soto (Ciudad Bolívar, Venezuela, 1923–2005) was the foreign artist honored at the VIII Bienal de San Juan del Grabado Latinoamericano y del Caribe [8th San Juan Biennial of Latin American and Caribbean Prints] in 1988. Plástica magazine, where this review was published, was an art publication that appeared fairly regularly in Puerto Rico. It began modestly enough in 1968, as the newsletter of the Liga de arte de San Juan [San Juan Art League], but changed its name in 1978 to Plástica revista de la Liga de estudiantes de San Juan [San Juan Student League Visual Arts Magazine]. Its very specific title notwithstanding, the twenty-one issues of the magazine explored a wide range of subjects within the broad parameters of Puerto Rican and Latin American art, filling its pages with retrospective coverage of subjects, such as the V Bienal de San Juan del grabado latinoamericano y del Caribe [5th San Juan Biennial of Latin American and Caribbean Prints] (1981), Puerto Rican architecture, and Latin American visual arts. The first editorial board of the magazine included Hélène Saldaña, Delta Picó, Cordelia Buitrago, and J.M. García Segovia. In addition to the many essays written by top Puerto Rican thinkers, the magazine published contributions from some of the leading Latin American artists and critics, such as Luis Camnitzer, Damián Bayón, Jacqueline Barnitz, Samuel Cherson, Joseph Alsop, Omar Rayo, and Ricardo Pau Llosa, among many others.