assemblage
Torsions Mobilo-Static
Walter Leblanc
About this work
Object details
- TitleTorsions Mobilo-Static
- Date1967
- Mediumplastic
- Measurements121 × 120 cm
- Inventory number3140
More about this work
Walter Leblanc introduced the ‘torsion form’ as the basic element in his systematic and serial artistic practice in 1959. Initially he integrated cotton threads twisted together in geometrical configurations so as give his monochrome and minimalist paintings an organised three-dimensionality. He also added grains of sand in order to create extra structure and texture. With the Twisted strings and the sand he linked up with international Neo-Constructivist trends. He took part in manifestations of the German ZERO movement, joined the Nouvelle Tendance, was co-founder of the Antwerp G58 movement, and experimented with op art and kinetic art. Starting in 1967 he used twisted vinyl polymer ribbons in a modular series of works titled Torsions Mobilo-Static. This work is one of them.
This square version consists of two mirrored parts, the horizontal arrangement of both parts contrasts with the vertically mounted vinyl polymer ribbons that rotate around their axis in opposing directions at top and bottom. Each ribbon has two torsions that reveal their white and blue sides and the monochrome black background. As a whole, the interplay of the parallel coloured ribbons, torsions and background create a static movement, ‘a virtual twisting motion’ that is activated optically when the viewer moves past the work. The view of these rhythmic surfaces varies, depending on the viewer’s position. The result is a varying optical experience of vibrations and fractionalised light and colour contrasts. The artist himself described the experience of his work as follows: ‘The structural mobile interplay takes place between the brain and the heart and creates an equilibrium between reflection and intuition’.
‘The work is fully in the function of visual observation – op(tical) art – and can be regarded more as an aesthetic proposition than as art’, was Leblanc’s opinion. In order to objectivise the visual communication between the viewer and the work as far as possible, he switched himself off, as it were. That is why the Torsions Mobilo-Static are characterised above all by an industrial, functional aesthetic and the absence of a personal ‘script with paint, such as the handling of paint in Van Gogh’s work, for example’. That also explains the use of neutral non-colours like white and black and of primary colours like blue, red and yellow, that serve solely as ‘signals’ to clarify the directional difference of the torsions.
The Torsions Mobilo-Static have the tendency to move outside the picture plane. They are tableaux that activate space through the explicit ‘torsion forms’. The artist explained again: ‘The metamorphosis of plane to spatial element occurs through the rotational force that visually distorts the rectilinear parallelism of the flat strip into converging curved lines in space. By twisting one switches from a parallel demarcation in one plane to parallel demarcation around an axis, thus in space'. Leblanc categorised such works under the denominator ‘Anti-Peinture’: meaning tableaux that conquer space without being sculptures.
References
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