Torsions 40F.9

Twisting strips of black and white tape vibrate across Walter Leblanc’s Torsions 40F9. Executed circa 1965-1966, the work was included in two of the artist’s subsequent solo presentations: first, in 1968, at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, and then at Verviers’ Société des Beaux-Arts in 1970. In Torsions 40F9, Leblanc divided the metre-tall work into three sections, filling each with flattened strips that together form an interlocking pattern of optical exuberance. Anticipating the nascent discourses that would come to define both Minimalism and Op-Art, Leblanc’s abstractions present a ‘sensorial geometry’ and an incandescent choreography (‘Walter Leblanc “Sensorial Geometries” at Cortesi Gallery, London’, Mousse, n. date). Moving beyond a conventional understanding of both painting or sculpture, Torsions 40F9 instead proposes a new spatiality and a new perceptual awareness, in part inspired by Leblanc’s role as a founding member of Antwerp’s artist group G58 and an active participant in the influential and international ZERO group. The inception of both the short-lived G58 as well as ZERO signalled a revival of an avant-garde and experimental art as both groups purposefully sought out new artistic horizons. The use of light as a medium by ZERO artists was particularly resonant within Leblanc’s practice, for whom abstraction was never purely a flat, pictorial element. Indeed, Leblanc began his career as a painter but by the mid-1960s, he had begun embracing sculpture and sculptural paintings. In 1959, he began incorporating the torsions, using the pictorial element to bring dimensionality to his canvases. For these, he investigated a range of non-traditional materials including thread, latex, metal and polyvinyl tape as seen in the present work. In Torsions 40F9, the strips of tape never seem fully fixed, caught in the act of unspooling. The bands of black and white create flickering rays of dizzying rhythm that generate their own vitality.