R.643
Artist name
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Artwork make date
Artwork material
wood
Artwork dimensions
width: 60cm
width: 4.5cm
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Label text
R.643 was produced in 1998, at which time Juan Melé was exhibiting with the reformed and revived Madí Group in Argentina. In the 1940s, when Madí was founded, Melé had in fact been a member of another school of abstract art, the Associación Arte Concreto Invención. Both groups produced works that were resolutely non-pictorial and non-representational. Their imperative was invention, and the new forms that they invented frequently incorporated virtual or actual movement. Melé and his circle regarded the frame not as a separate border, but as an integral part of the work's abstract composition. Thus the frame was not bound to the pictorial square; it was part of the dynamism of the whole and could be cut or modified into any shape. R.643 is composed of sections of wood that are cut and painted in such a way that the form as a whole will change according to the position of the viewer. Characteristic of Melé's work of this period, here one of the surfaces is subtly curved; this adds a more complex aspect to its visually mutable form.
Isobel Whitelegg