FRAME is proud to provide support for the exhibition catalogue of Electric Op, on view at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum from September 27, 2024 – January 27, 2025.
Drawing on AKG’s leading collection of Op art (short for “optical”), Electric Op brings together more than 100 artworks by nearly 90 artists to trace the six-decade history of the relationship between Op art and electronic art and culture. Through these artworks, Op art became more than just the final chapter of modernist geometric abstraction—it was also the first artistic movement of the global Information Age.
The exhibition features dynamic paintings, sculptures, and prints by international Op artists working in the 1960s and 1970s, placed into dialogue with analog videos and computer-generated prints and films of the same period, demonstrating how Op became “Electric.” Also included are more recent contemporary artworks from the 1980s onward that embody the sensibility of “Electric Op,” including paintings, sculptures of programmed lights, and even an interactive digital game. This exciting exhibition concludes with a presentation of vintage ephemera and other cultural artifacts; together, these show how Op art even shaped what electronic technology looks like in our popular imagination.
Electric Op is curated by former Buffalo AKG Art Museum Curator Tina Rivers Ryan and is co-organized by the Buffalo AKG Art Museum and the Musée d’arts de Nantes, where it will next be on view from April 4, 2025 to September 1, 2025.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a large-format, bilingual (English/French) catalogue published by Giles, which features plates of 123 artworks by 88 international artists and collectives from the 1960s to the present (including Victor Vasarely, Vera Molnar, Lillian Schwartz, JODI, Ryoji Ikeda and Cory Arcangel) and offers a scholarly re-evaluation of the legacy of abstraction and the surprisingly intertwined histories of contemporary and digital art.
The exhibition catalogue for Electric Op was produced in part with the support of the FRench American Museum Exchange (FRAME). To learn more about the exhibition, featured artists, and the catalogue click here.
