Exhibition Preview Atrium

As of the 1950s, Morellet’s works were strikingly consistent. He developed a distinctive visual language based on his formal geometrical inventiveness and systematic concepts. Each work complies with ordering principles which he himself defined as juxtaposition, superimposition, chance, interference or fragmentation. Having started with painting, he was one of the first artists to work with artificial light in the 1960s. Of the artist’s numerous projects in the public domain, the works that stand out particularly are those he realised for the Louvre in Paris and the Paul Löbe Haus, parliamentary building of the German Bundestag in Berlin.

There is of course much more to Morellet’s oeuvre than his clear stylistic idiom. Through the use of titles, which are full of allusions and wordplay, the “non-linguistic” aspect of abstract art is often extended and is especially apt in French. These open up interpretational possibilities for viewers that are both intellectual and entertaining. The artist speaks of "collisions" and describes his work as being “almost nothing” (“Presque rien”), although not without challenging us to read whatever we want into that “nothing”. The exhibition may be understood, therefore, as an invitation to enter into a cheerful and serious dialogue with works of art that ascribe an active role to us as viewers.