“The line involved, or redundantly, delineates volumes that compose our universe.”
—Sérvulo Esmeraldo
A purveyor of myriad mediums including sculpture, illustration and engraving, the Brazilian-born Sérvulo Esmeraldo became notorious within the Kinetic Art movement for his Excitables series, works that were activated by static electricity from the viewer’s touch. The title of the work Excitable E7113 infers that the artist labelled his works systematically: “E” for “excitable”, “71” referring to 1971, and “13” to the date of the work’s inception. The work comprises a plexiglass lid, under which seventy-two wooden sticks are held to a board with a string and nails. Rubbing the surface of the plexiglass stimulates a static charge that activates the wooden sticks, allowing them to momentarily flick up and down as the hand traversed the surface of the work. Excitables actively invites audience participation, subverting the traditional viewing experience and closing the distance between observer and object.
The artist was fascinated by physics; how objects moved and held space. After moving to São Paulo at an early age, Esmeraldo briefly worked at the Brazilian Engineering Company (EBE), a formative experience that left him gripped by the interplay of mathematics and three-dimensional instillation. He channelled this inquisitive vigour into his Excitables series, explaining how although the work appears initially to be static, it is in fact alike natural phenomena – be it leaves in the wind or coral in the ocean current – infused with movement and in constant motion, always under the influence of electrical charges and atmospheric conditions.
Maintaining throughout his sixty-year oeuvre that “geometry describes everything that you see”, Esmeraldo brings into unlikely unison the axiomatic nature of empiricism with earnest artistic liberty. Like his contemporaries, the artists of the Kinetic Art movement integrated machine technology with the modern art world – two opposing forces previously thought to remain binary polarities. Kinetic artists experimented with geometric shapes and motion, both in real space as well as virtual movement on a flat plane: Alexander Calder manufactured mobiles with delicate components responding to shifting air currents, while Bridget Riley’s optical illusions convince the mind that the static is really moving. Esmerlado’s three-dimensional objects inhabit this liminal space between the flat plane and real space, infusing his art with currents that modify the structure of the composition. In this way, Esmeraldo has left a legacy for Brazilian contemporary art, internationally received and admired for his art created with the purest of forms.
