Culture Watch: Carlos Cruz-Diez: Color in Space and Time
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‘Carlos Cruz-Diez: Color in Space and Time’
Edited by Mari Carmen Ramírez and Héctor Olea
(Museum of Fine Arts Houston, $75)
One star of the Museum of Contemporary Art exhibition “Suprasensorial: Latin American Light and Space” was a walk-in light installation by Carlos Cruz-Diez, the Venezuelan artist who combines the perceptual canniness of Robert Irwin, the fluorescent lighting of Dan Flavin and the dazzling patterns of Victor Vasarely into his own brand of optical illusions.
Now the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, has staged the first major retrospective of the artist’s work and published this catalog to match. It charts his journey from abstract painting to sculptural reliefs and light installations, typically made with prefab materials and high-contrast colors to bring forth a new “plastic reality.”
With superb production standards, the book packs a perceptual punch in its own right.
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