Yaacov Agam

Shalom Window

Multiple. Silkscreens in colors on two movable acrylic glasses, wooden frame

Signed

23 x 33 cm

 

YAACOV AGAM (* 1928 Israel)

Yaacov Agam is the pioneer of the kinetic movement in art and its most outstanding contemporary representative. Agam fundamentally changed the accepted idea of art as a fixed image. He works with color, form, time and movement which makes his art four-dimensional. His works are included in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, Centre Pompidou, Paris, Guggenheim Museum, New York, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., Santa Barbara Museum of Art, among others. Yaacov Agam continues to work tirelessly on bringing his philosophy of visual education to the public. ​

Making art which includes the infinite form and transformation within itself, Agam creates sophisticated art objects refined in their simplicity that evoke invisible possibilities of a given space. His artwork is in permanent dialogue with the world of man and his environment, so that we can better become aware of ourselves and look further in to our relation with the world. In order to communicate the ideas about life, reality and time Yaacov Agam uses a variety of media and techniques. One of the best examples for his four-dimensional art is the polymorph where several different images are hidden in a single painting – they appear, fuse together and disappear, depending on the viewer’s eyes. Agam is embracing technology and is increasingly interested in applying his artistic principles to new medias.​

Some examples of Agam's environmental-scale works of kinetic painting include a room at the Elysée palace in Paris – a room that is now part of the permanent display at the Centre Pompidou, the facades of buildings such as the The Heart of the Fountainhead in Taipei, Dan Hotel in Tel Aviv, a Miami condominium Villa Regina or the Mondrian Hotel on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. Those are buildings turned into huge outdoor kinetic sculptures, their outside walls look different according to the angle at which you face them.​

"My intention was to create a work of art which would transcend the visible, which cannot be perceived except in stages, with the understanding that it is a partial revelation and the perpetuation of the existing. My aim is to show what can be seen within the limits of possibilty which exists in the midst of coming into being.“, Agam. The Agam Museum was opened last year in his home town, Rishon Lezionin Israel – a tribute to one of the greatest living artists today. The museum is also a part of Agam’s educational center, which invites people not only to see his body of work but also to stop thinking two-dimensional and start thinking four-dimensional, in other words: to start thinking big. ​