Soto. The Fourth Dimension

• Dates: October 18, 2019–February 9, 2020
• Curator: Manuel Cirauqui, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao presents Soto. The Fourth Dimension, a retrospective exhibition of the works of Jesús Rafael Soto (b. 1923, Ciudad Bolívar, Venezuela; d. 2005, Paris). Organized by the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in collaboration with the Atelier Soto in Paris, the show brings together over 60 works, including several of Soto’s large-scale participatory sculptures called Penetrables, some of his most iconic and important contributions to the recent history of art. In addition, the show includes a large number of historic paintings and mural works, which help to understand the fundamental role Soto played in the development of Kinetic Art from the early 1950s to the end of the 1960s, and to appreciate the development of his artistic practice up to the first decade of the 21st century.

Soto. The Fourth Dimension also presents characteristic examples from his most important series, such as Virtual Volumes, vertical works that suggest large geometric forms suspended in the air; Extensions, floor-bound pieces where a chromatic mass, sometimes opaque, and other times as light as a halo, emerge from the ground; and Progressions, works in which aerial forms protrude from the floor or ceiling to meet in what seems like a kinetic sequence or an unbroken play of tensions.