Review
Score: 4 op 5

Yves Klein expo goes beyond blue

Gilles Bechet
© BRUZZ
18/04/2017

More than just a retrospective, the Yves Klein exhibition at Bozar, with thirty or so of his major works, traces the career of this unique artist. Klein transcended genres in search of the absolute and his influence can still be seen in the art of today.

For most people, the profoundly radical and very brief artistic career of Yves Klein can be boiled down to his iconic blue. Though not wrong, this is certainly a little reductive. This exhibition, which was jointly produced by Tate Liverpool and Bozar, explores what lies beyond that intense blue through thirty or so works.

The colour was introduced straight away with his first exhibition. It was monochromatic. His canvasses, painted with a roller, convey no texture and are devoid of formal expression. Influenced by immateriality in Japanese and Christian spirituality, Klein saw colour as an energy which resonates differently with each viewer. He sought to reveal the intangible through a transient experience. The blue, which he developed with a friend, became a key with which the artist could rewrite the world.

He would soak sponges in it and transform them into mineral sculptures. A painter who never used a paintbrush, he also sought to capture the essence and energy of the colour in his happenings, Les Anthropométries de l'époque bleue, in which naked models daubed themselves in blue with a sponge before rolling on white paper to the sound of a noise music symphony. We can relive these "action spectacles", as he called them, through photos and videos, which are strange to look back on.

Art of falling
His pursuit of the void led to an incredible exhibition, "Le Vide", at the Iris Clert gallery in Paris. Drawn by blue invitation cards, the crowd went through a corridor, painted blue, where they would absorb the colour before entering a gallery which was empty, but full of "immaterial sensibility". The impact of this conceptual work is only discernible through some photos. Klein was also an artist who knew how to put on a show and play with codes of representation.

Fascinated by judo, he became a master of the art of falling. In the last room are some of the famous blue monochromes which, after more than fifty years, still seem every bit as intense, despite the plexiglass case which now protects them. The reconstruction of a piece from 1957, a long monochrome resting on the ground, thoroughly encapsulates the energy of the colour at the centre of Yves Klein's obsessive quest. A pioneer of many movements which spread in the second half of the twentieth century, including conceptual art, minimalism, and performance art, Klein remains, above all, a unique artist.

> Yves Klein: Theatre of the void. > 20/08, Bozar, Brussels

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