GRAV

GRAV
Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel
1960-1968

The study of visual phenomena produced by certain arrangements of fixed or moving surfaces or volumes has been little explored until now. It is precisely this problem that the Visual Art Research Group wishes to tackle. Our main concern is to establish the codification of signs, networks, structures and certain physical or optical constants.

In many respects, our working methods and research techniques resemble those of a scientist. From these studies, new knowledge will emerge, no longer disparate, but this time codified; They will thus constitute new bases for new research that will take us closer to our goal: knowledge of the “visual phenomenon”.

Yvaral, 1962
 

The GRAV was formed around very firm rejections, but its theory only became clearer little by little. At the beginning, the artists conceived their meeting place as a “center,” that is, a laboratory where precise data would converge, a sort of information bank.  Organized according to principles in use among scientists, they set themselves goals that were uncommon in the world of painters:

1) Overcoming the myth of the inspired artist-creator. The visual artist is a technician, an engineer.

2) Teamwork.

3) No ownership of an artistic genre.

The research of one could serve as a starting point for another, just as in science, where a discovery can immediately be used by all the others.

Yvaral, within the Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel (GRAV), mainly focused on the problems of moiré effects, created using vinyl threads. As early as 1960, the “plans-espaces” appeared, changing according to the viewing angle. Seen from the front, the object gives the illusion of a flat surface, but as the spectator moves, the concentric squares, rigorously identical, transform into ellipses.

Unlike Soto, who never sought to systematize the moiré effect, Yvaral pushed the scientific analysis of the phenomenon very far. After his “plans-espaces”, he multiplied the possibilities by using inclined planes, diversifying background grids, and superimposing several levels of structures. Optical accelerations, which use several rows of transparent threads, produce effects of virtual movement faster than the spectator’s own movement.

There is an almost encyclopedic ambition in Yvaral’s research. The moiré effect is achieved in turn through cubes and polyhedra. For nearly six years, Yvaral concentrated his studies on the precise calibration of kinetic moiré.

 On a theoretical level, the research of the GRAV is clearly defined. There is a decision to move away from emotion and from meaning. The artwork is a real event that requires no interpretation. It is a visual spectacle that demands no special artistic culture in order to be appreciated.

At the beginning of the GRAV, the artist–spectator relationship is reduced to vision alone. Shortly thereafter, the idea of participation emerges. First, the work incorporates the spectator’s movement, and then it requires the spectator’s active collaboration.

Otto Hahn