Gran Marrón toys with our perceptions, flickering between light and dark, flatness and volume, stillness and motion. Executed in 2001, Gran Marrón is a testament to Jesús Rafael Soto’s masterful understanding of human perception. Invited to participate in Galerie Denise René’s defining exhibition Le Mouvement in 1955, the contemporary Parisian audiences were intrigued by the artist’s innovative use of overlapping patterned Plexiglas that created a moiré effect. Soto’s work in Le Mouvement had a profound influence on optical art; his dialogue with optics and his manipulation of colour and form culminate in the present work.

In the lower half of Gran Marrón, a restless energy is created by the contrast between the densely packed but finely painted black and white vertical and the horizontally-striped square units that are affixed to it, creating energetic disruption from the intricately ordered composition. These vibrating patterns reveal themselves to be composed of multiple planes, as the central portion extrudes even further into the viewer’s space. The black, brown and yellow squares emerge and subside through the grey haze of stripes. Through the upper half of the work, a calm swathe of iridescent brown appears peaceful and subtle, with tonal variations created from the viewer’s varying perspectives. It appears as a blend of the colours of the lower half, creating a unifying force throughout this dynamic work. A key proponent of ZERO, Soto’s hopeful vision of a new art challenged the entrenched idea of the artist as the sole author of meaning and instead necessitated viewers to activate the work through their plural experiences of the phenomena of light and space. Soto’s oeuvre crucially engages with the sensations of being experienced by an embodied viewer, as exemplified in the present work.