Drawing on the Buffalo 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, featuring full-page illustrations of nearly a hundred sensational works, including many that are rarely seen or reproduced. It also includes a major overview essay by the exhibition’s curator; three newly commissioned essays on Op art, the relationship between art and science, and computer graphics by leading scholars of these topics; and an anthology of writings by artists in the exhibition that address the relationship between abstraction and technology.
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.
