Posted on
2021-03-15
In 1957, François Morellet began a series of variations on patterns of L-shapes, all executed in oil paint on wooden panels measuring 80 cm by 80 cm. The series is called Répartition de 16 formes identiques [Distribution of 16 identical shapes]. Some of the paintings work with a highly legible, logical principle of symmetry, with the Ls slotted in to one another in a sort of puzzle in which the vertical and horizontal positions of the shape balance out across the panel. The painting exhibited here uses the same materials and has the same dimensions as the works from 1957, but this time Morellet has made use of the black and white colour scheme present in many of his chance distributions in 1958.
As for the pattern, this comes from one of the 1957 paintings. The distribution, if one looks just at the organisation of the black and white space, seems to follow a set of rules in a protocol that brings to the fore the major role played by Morellet in the history of protoconceptualism. One can’t look at it without thinking of the different series Sol LeWitt made a few years later, and
which would become the matrix for his wall drawings. Or without making a connection with the Ls that Robert Morris exhibited at Green Gallery in New York in 1965, even if Morris’ method and intentions were very different from Morellet’s. It nonetheless remains the case that between the mid 1950s and the 1960s, these ‘identical’ shapes inspired a number of creations that would mark the history, indeed the prehistory, of minimal, processual, systematic, or conceptual art.
Opposite – Répartition de 16 formes identiques, 1958
Exhibition runs through to April 3rd, 2021
Kamel Mennour
28, avenue Matignon
75008
Paris
kamelmennour.com
