SPIELOBJEKTE Die Kunst der Möglichkeiten

Spielobjekte, Installation view, Museum Tinguely, Basel, till May 11, 2014, Courtesy Archivio Mary Vieira

Isisuf and Archivio Mary Vieira cordially invites you to Play Objects – The Art of Possibilities. Comprising approximately 100 exhibits this special exhibition presents the diversity and history of the variable artwork. The transformable ‘play object’, which has also been described in art history as an ‘object of variation’ or a ‘participative object’, experienced its heyday, in the area of concrete-constructive and kinetic art in particular, at the end of the 1960s. During this period artists pursued the aim of getting the beholder directly involved in creating and transforming their art objects in different ways. The beholder changes the movement-based compositions of images, reliefs and sculptures and thereby chooses a configuration that pleases him or her. This turns the audience into a direct player between artist and artwork. Museum Tinguely offers the unique opportunity to experience many of the works in all their variability at first hand within a comprehensive program of more than 300 interactive public tours.
Pioneers of the Play Object 
Sculptures from the 1930s and 1940s that anticipated the ‘play object’, in the form in which it became increasingly fashionable in the 1960s, will be presented in an introductory section. On show will be articulated works in wood and metal by the Argentine artists’ group MADI, led by Gyula Kosice and Carmelo Arden Quin, along with the sculpture Game, which is evidently designed to recall a board game, by the Briton William Turnbull. In addition to early works by Hugo Weber and Hans Erni, the sculpture Mobile by Le Corbusier (known chiefly as an architect) also demonstrates that Swiss artists were innovative in the field of the transformable artwork.
Concrete-constructive Play Art
The exhibition’s focus lies on the 1950s-1970s, during which period concrete-constructive artists in particular confronted the topic of direct beholder involvement in the most diverse manner, developing a broad range of techniques and utilizing various materials. On show, among others, are early dynamic reliefs by Karl Gerstner, Spielobjekte by Gerhard von Graevenitz, a large Kugelbild by Paul Talman, the Grosse Drehflügel Serie E and the Vierkantrohre Serie DW by Charlotte Posenenske. Dieter Roth began to breach constructive art’s strict rules of order right from his early works. For example, as in op-art, visual interferences are generated in the Drehrasterbild by means of rotary movements. In the Gummibandbild the visual support becomes a playing field with rows of nails running orthogonally: the user, who is able to form an infinite variety of patterns and shapes by tensing the elastic bands on the nails, becomes the artist and collaborator in an art form for everyone. 
 South American artists such as Carlos Cruz-Diez or Mary Vieira, who created transformable sculptures out of wood or metal, also explained their participative art in socio-political terms. Italian artists within the Milan-based Gruppo T, among them Gianni Colombo, Gabriele Devecchi and Grazia Varisco, dealt intensively with the topics of space, time and movement. Magnetic elements and belts can be moved on Varisco’s reliefs. In Colombo’s Superficie in variazione levers on the faux fur surface are pulled in order to create different structures.