Leon Tovar Gallery

Leon Tovar Gallery is pleased to present Shifting Planes: Op Explorations in Latin American Abstraction opening January 25th, 2024 featuring 14 works by renowned artists Nedo (b. Milan, Italy 1926 – d. Caracas, Venezuela 2001), Julio le Parc (b. Mendoza, Argentina 1928 – ), Omar Rayo (b. Roldanillo, Colombia 1928 – d. Palmira, Colombia 2010), Francisco Salazar (b. Quiriquire, Venezuela 1929 – d. Paris, France 2018), Jesús Rafael Soto (b. Ciudad Bolívar, Venezuela 1923 – d. Paris, France 2005), and Luis Tomasello (b. La Plata, Argentina 1915 – d. Paris, France 2014). From static form to animated experimentation, Shifting Planes: Op Explorations in Latin American Abstraction chronicles a pivotal transition in Latin American art. Indeed, Nedo, le Parc, Rayo, Salazar, Soto, and Tomasello demonstrated – in their own ways and through their own contributions – the region’s capabilities for global dialogue through a new visual language emanating from its diverse cultural matrix. By boldly expanding artistic frontiers, these five artists participated in the region's assertion of its existing cultural dynamism and possibilities. Their pioneering contributions relocated Latin America from its place on the periphery of modernism to the center of vanguard movements. The arc traced from quiescence to motion mirrors Latin America's shift from overlooked to recognized, and acclaimed. To evoke Cuban historian Alejo Carpentier, these artists participated in the heralding of Latin America’s transition from object of interpretation to proponent of a new grammar that would irrevocably change the history of universal artistic thought. Shifting Planes aims to spotlight the works of these genre-defining artists, creators of an abstract visual language in constant flux, a result of their explorations with kinetics, perception, and transience. Each one of these artists contributed their own take on these experimentations, from Rayo’s fusing of geometric abstraction with Colombian folklore – blending Op Art compositions with representations of traditional dances, festivals, masks, and indigenous mythology; to Le Parc’s pioneering participatory environments that continually shift to reveal the relativity of reality and visual experience… Along with Nedo, Salazar, and Soto; the works presented here ultimately exhibit creativity freed from constraints. No longer limited to inertia, the viewer is invited to engage. The once static frame energized into endless welcoming and possibility.