CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/1/2014

Lygia Clark

In 1960, Brazilian artist Lygia Clark wrote, "For me art is only valid in the ethico-religious sense, internally connected to the inner elaboration of the artist in its deepest sense, which is the existential. My whole vision is not purely optical, but is profoundly connected to my experience of feeling, not only in the immediate sense, but even more, in the deeper sense in which one doesn't know what is its origin. That which a form may express only has a meaning for me in a strict relationship with its inner space, the empty-full of its existence, just as there exists our space which goes on being completed and taking on meaning as maturity arrives. At times I think that before we are born we are like a closed fist which opens its first finger when we are born and is opened internally like the petals of a flower as we discover the meaning of our existence, for us at a certain moment to become aware of this plenitude of an empty-full (interior time)." Featured image, of Clark's proposition, "Diálogo de mãos (Dialogue of the Hands)" (1966), is reproduced from Lygia Clark: The Abandonment of Art, the excellent catalog to the major retrospective on view at The Museum of Modern Art, New York May 10 - August 24.