PRE-NET | Optically Kinetic Sculptures by Sydney Cash

In the mid-1980s Cash started experimenting with Flutex, an old industrial, patterned glass that acts as a lenticular screen to make a body of optically kinetic work. Informed by the 1960s work of GRAV (Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel) artists (Victor Vassarely, Julio LeParc and Francois Morellet) and his own experiments Cash uses glass as the optical architecture for line patterns on multiple planes, creating a kinetic moiré effect.

PRE-NET will reprise a 1987 installation Cash produced for the Broadway Windows. Artforum editor Barry Schwabsky wrote at the time: ‘…these pieces clearly refer to the Op and Kinetic art of the ‘60s, they posses a gravity that was rare in such work, thanks in part to the beauty of the intensely colored light playing through the glass, as well as to the totemic tripartite division so reminiscent of Rothko, but above all to the fact that while Op art was purely an art of surfaces, that of Cash is an art of layer in depth – of mystery and disclosure….There is something wonderful about the way Cash has used the motion of the passerby to trigger the effect that seduces him or her into stopping to look and to reflect on what has been seen.’ The exhibition will also include several sculptures, which range from examples of the original series to a 2016 piece Contemporary Architecture.

Largely self-taught, Sydney Cash was mentored by painter and sculptor Ben-Zion, a founding member of the Expressionist group The Ten (along with Mark Rothko and Adolf Gotlieb). His public art projects include a permanent installation of sixteen large scale windows for the MTA’s Queensborough Plaza subway station. Cash’s work is included in numerous private and public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. and Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris, France.