Lot 15: Lygia Clark

Bicho

Dimensions variable; approximately 55 x 36 x 36 cm (21 5/8 x 14 1/8 x 14 1/8 in). <br>

Aluminium.

c. 1960

Private Collection, Kuesnacht-Zurich

In 1959, Brazilian artist Lygia Clark was one of the founders of the Neo-Concretist group, an avant-garde movement also numbering Helio Oiticica, Lygia Pape and Ivan Serpa among its instigators. Strongly influenced by Marcel Duchamp and Dada, the Neo-Concretists defined art as subjective and organic, believing that an artwork should be manipulated by the spectator, and that during this interaction the object and person would become a single entity. Begun in 1959, Clark's Bicho pieces, of which the present lot is a strong example, synthesize the formal innovations of the Neo-Concretists and poignantly express their radical vision for the social role of art. By human interaction with these kinetic, geometric forms, art could now become a multi-sensory experience involving the spectator as an active participant.
Clark began her artistic career as a geometric abstract painter but gradually became more interested in collapse notions of top and bottom, front and back, the traditional elements we take for granted in a two dimensional picture plane. These concerns eventually led her to to create the Bichos, which are essentially foldable, kinetic sculptures made of hinged aluminium sheets. In its flattened state, Bicho may look as if it could hang on the wall, but Clark intended such sculptures to be opened, folded and reconfigured by her audience into a range of different shapes - all of which can move, and none of which remain static. Ultimately, there is no right or wrong way to display Bicho, because there no determined front or back, inside or outside. This approach has been described as the death of the art object and, accordingly, Bicho can be interpreted as a visual representation of Lygia Clark's lifelong obsessions with the existential issues of life and death.
"When we play with Bichos, we un-learn the traditional dialogue of artist/art and spectator, in which the spectator is synonymous with receptor. When the spectator or rather initiator plays with Bichos, he plays with life, he identifies himself with it, feeling it in its totality, participating in a unique and total moment, he exists. The gesture is not the gesture of the artist when he is creating, but it is the very dialogue of the work with spectator."
(Lygia Clark, quoted in exhibition catalogue, Lygia Clark, 1998, p.122)