Julio Le Parc

Paris-based Argentinian artist Julio Le Parc is a pioneer of kinetic art in the 1960s and a co-founder of the influential collective G.R.A.V. (Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel), which explored the relationship between art and technology through optical and phenomenological investigations. Le Parc's work, both with GRAV and individually, reflects an interest in the viewer's perceptual encounter, epitomized by works such as Une journée dans la rue (1966), for which GRAV staged participatory situations in public spaces throughout Paris. After the dissolution of GRAV in the late 1960s, Le Parc's work continued to explore issues of dematerialization, perceptive haze, formal reduction, and artificial light, transforming the space of the viewer. In 1972, he famously turned down a retrospective at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris based on a coin toss, subjecting his relationship to the institutions of art to chance. Le Parc's work has been included in numerous significant historical exhibitions, including the 1966 Venice Biennale, where he received the Grand Prix for painting. He is the subject of a 2013 retrospective at the Palais de Tokyo.