3Radicals: Joseph Plateau

The exhibition 3Radicals combines the most recent graphic work by Artist in Focus Cameron Jamie with an significant overview of the three-dimensional work by the Filmmaker in Focus Robert Breer (kinetic sculptures, objects, film materials). The third central figure is Paul Sharits, deceased in 1993. For the first time a substantial selection of his film installations and mixed media work is presented in The Netherlands. Together they illustrate how idiosyncratic pioneers of the experimental film are gaining new relevance for a younger generation of audio-visual iconoclasts.

As a media-archeological prelude to the show, a small presentation of objects and prints refers to the Belgium researcher Joseph Plateau (1801-1883), who instigated as a scientist and pioneer of the cinematic principle both animation film, op-art and above all visual experimentation as an attitude in life. After experimenting with staring straight into the sun, Plateau conceived coloured discs. With these, he formed series of moving figures and drawings, thereby creating a basis for the practices that Breer, Sharits and Jamie all have developed in their unique, personal way.

Joseph Plateau
All from the collection of the Museum voor de Geschiedenis van de Wetenschappen, Universiteit Gent:
– Coeurs roulants: Needlework made by one of the ladies from the Plateau family
– Coloured cardboards, used by Plateau for colour observations (couleurs accidentelles)
– Coloured curves used by Plateau to study the retinal afterimage
– Disc with depiction of a coloured spiral
– Disc with the black and white depiction of a spiral
– A handheld phenakistiscope with mirror
– Instruments for the study of the irradiation phenomenon
– Phenakistiscope disc with depiction of a spiral composed of coloured circles
– Phenakistiscope disc with depiction of a spiral that demonstrates the transition from young girl to old waif
– Phenakistiscope disc with the depiction of a dragon and a red ball
– Phenakistiscope disc with the depiction of a spiral that demonstrates a centrifugal skull
– Portrait in complementary colours, presumably representing Adolphe Quételet
– Set of small discs to study colour effects (fascimiles)
– A series of discs with coloured sectins to study the addition of mixed colours
– Wax statue of Joseph Plateau, from the collection of the Royal Film Archive, Brussels