New Zero
Ausstellungsansicht
Piero Manzoni / John Nixon
Henk Peeters
Jef Verheyen
Jean Tinguely
Jesus Rafael Soto
Martial Rayisse
Martial Raysse
Peinture lumière, no year (about 1965)
Canvas, neon on wood
verso by the artist : "pour Otto Hahn"
63 x 78 x 5,5 cm
Raysse's works emerged from this generation's profound need to define a sense and understanding of modern nature, something that left the traditional sense of nature.
"Raysse is not concerned to make a painting that is like a landscape or like a portrait, but to invent a new substitute for the landscape or the portrait: photograph, photocopy, flocking, paper cut-outs, neon . . . something or other. Provided that identity is broken and the distance from reality increased." (Otto Hahn, 1965)Peinture lumière can be read as a demonstration of one of the basic conditions of 'figurative quality': form, light, support material for colour. These are presented as "without content", emptied of their content and significance. The empty canvas represents painting as a categorical definition, just as the neon light represents both the idea of colour and also the criteria of pictorial light/illuminating light.
Raysse presents the traditional descriptive methods of painting as "individualized", pure and minimalist materials, uses the components canvas and neon as ready-mades. To this extent the work addresses the central themes of Minimal and Concept Art.