Tubes of blue argon, acrylic on canvas on wood

One of our favourite pieces of this great French artist, precursor of minimalism and considered to be a major player of geometric abstraction (way before some American artists that are more well-known on the art market) and who disappeared in May 2016. Since his large retrospective at Beaubourg in 2011, every time we saw one of his pieces in a fair, we hesitated to go for it. This one convinced us for its purity, its light, its austerity and the cherry on the cake was the humour in its title. CVF

Two white squares, a major motif of geometric abstraction, are set together so that the corner of one touches the corner of the other. A thin pale blue neon light crosses through the first one, from one angle to another when faced with the other, heading to the second one but as a quarter circle. The arrival of the neon in History of art was no easy feat. Morellet’s goal is to play with our perception using a rigorous layout whose proposal should be clear. As an engineer, François Morellet announces an assumption on the feasibility of the visual result, stating beforehand the shapes, curves, imbrications and repetitions of the different planned elements, without straying from it. Come what may. At first glance, the minuteness of the installation, the visual cleanliness keeps us at a distance and generates surprise when noticing that it is in this formalism that freedom of the gaze will be born, the one who becomes independent and imposes itself to the intellect. The squares are no longer really squares, the white is no longer really white. We experience the situation of clients at the terrace of a café in front of whom an accident between two cars happens. Strangely, no one will have seen the same thing. JPF