curated by ariel jiménez painting in movement,

Opening November 12, Nara Roesler São Paulo presents Painting in Movement, an exhibition organized by Venezuelan curator Ariel Jiménez. The sixth and final show in the cycle celebrating Nara Roesler’s 50 years as a gallerist, the group exhibition brings together works by Abraham Palatnik, Amelia Toledo, Jesús Rafael Soto, José Patrício, Julio Le Parc, Laura Vinci, Raul Mourão, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Lucia Koch, Heinz Mack, Cao Guimarães, Rivane Neuenschwander, Jose Dávila, Jac Leirner, Magdalena Fernández Arriaga, and Andrés Michelena.

The exhibition takes as its starting point the experiments of modern artists who sought to incorporate time and movement into painting, pushing beyond the limits of the picture plane and bringing different artistic languages closer together. This inquiry unfolds across two sections: Tensions, devoted to works that suggest displacement through visual and chromatic relationships, and Active Forces, which gathers works activated by motors, by gravity, or by the viewer’s own movement. Highlights include Palatnik’s Objeto Cinético (1968/2006), which produces movement through motors and gears; Cruz-Diez’s Physichromie 526 (1970), which explores how color perception shifts as the viewer moves; and Amelia Toledo’s Om (1982), a flame-cut sheet of mirrored stainless steel that brings gravity into the composition.

By bringing together artists from different generations, Jiménez also shows how movement, initially tied to the modern fascination with machines and technology, endures as an expressive resource in contemporary art, at times accompanied by a critical perspective.