Author Description

Suprasensorial: Experiments in Light, Color, and Space is a generously illustrated, 148-page catalogue, published in conjunction with the exhibition which showcased the work of Latin American Artists, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Lucio Fontana, Julio Le Parc, Hélio Oiticica and Neville D'Almeida, and Jesús Rafael Soto. The publication features beautiful installation photographs by renowned architectural photographer Iwan Baan, as well as an essay by exhibition curator and MOCA Senior Curator Alma Ruiz, in which she presents a context for the development of this work in Latin America and an analysis of each piece featured in the exhibition. It also includes a select exhibition history and bibliography of each artist. The catalogue design reflects the participatory nature of the exhibition in that the reader is invited to participate actively in order to fully experience the catalogue. The specific inspiration came from Carlos Cruz-Diez, who, in the documentary film Life in Color: Cruz-Diez by Cine Archivo, explains how he was able to produce a whole solar spectrum using only two colors, red and green: 'If the two colors are side by side, a third color is generated.' By turning a 'rectangular' module into a linear one and engaging in a specific action, he was able to generate a third color (yellow) where the two lines touch. 'I destroyed the original form and eternal binomial form-color.' Cruz-Diez's realization that 'color is an autonomous event that does not require form' became the platform and core of all his subsequent work. The red and green colored gels included in this catalogue work by absorbing their own color wavelength in the spectrum, thus revealing other colors. They overlay onto the text in order to read, red for Spanish, green for English The design of this catalogue pays homage to the work of Thomas Widdershoven and Nikki Gonnissen, of the Amsterdam design firm Thonik, who conceived of tinted reading gels for The Best of Wim T. Schippers (Utrecht, The Netherland