Against the absolute certainty of the fundamental postulate of the material world's consistency, something accepted by the people of the XIX century as a reliable premise, the vision rescued by Soto from his time proposes a radically opposed interpretation. In his own words: "what is immaterial is the sensible reality of the universe. Art is the sensible knowledge of what is material". We should search the most qualified precedent in Heraclitus of Ephesus, some 25 centuries ago, when he offered a universe governed by energy (fire) subject to permanent genesis. Scientists as Einstein, Planck and Heisenberg, consider physics supported by relativity, by dynamics and even by the principles of uncertainty. Soto admires the poetry of movement in Calder's mobiles and Tinguely's engine-moved sculptures. He follows the worries of Gabo and Prevsner, when claiming in the famous Realist Manifesto of 1920 a art of real movements, instead of the hieratic rhythms, or the subjective movement, suggested by the Vorticism and Futurism of the first decades and even, later, by the already icon-like Nude Descending the Stairs of the genial Marcel Duchamp or of his "bicycle wheels" activated by any one. The movement and transmutation sought by Soto do not constitute a subjective print of movement, --something that was, after all, admirably reached by the impressionists-- but rather an event within the work itself, based, as the artist says, not "on a thing that moves", but on a relation,

This is the great takeoff. The idea is to establish a new grammar, similar to that of music, whereby the work is organized and displayed on serial systems. To do that, Soto discards the idea, traditionally accepted since the Renaissance,, based on the premises of form and composition, and substitutes them with two new notions: element and structure. The elements are equivalent among them and the structure is invisible, a force of cohesion. Both relate each other and develop themselves on serial works, alternating the point, the line and the circle, and converting discourse into free reading.

An aleatory element is introduced, the work elapses in open outwardness. Joined to this basic proposition is discovery of new relations when two physical planes are superposed in the work and, later, relief of horizontal lines are incorporated in a field of vertical bars. It is now the work itself that generates its extraordinary dynamics. We see the birth of vibration and an inevitable consequence, the dematerializing effect. As in the waters of a powerful river, we see in Soto's works how planes and movement of matter appear and vanish; matter, ridden of its presumed consistency, really turns into energy.

Determining works such as Invisible Curves, reveal quite well the process reached at this level. The curves hanging from several planes over the back of vertical straight lines, create a surprising effect: all sense of space location of elements is annulled, their color, their light and we end facing a flowing space in the presence of a vibrating and dematerializing reality. Soto incorporates other propositions to the scheme, led by the same objective of making something sensible out of reality by means of the constituent categories. We thus see the extensions, the progressions and finally the penetrables, as ways of being inside, in the core of the creation of the universe. In works conceived as a function of massive participation, Soto projects his work in the natural environment, in architecture and urban development. His great anthological exhibit in New York's Guggenheim Museum, 1976, may be considered a bold intervention: the penetrable placed at the center of the building's big spiral, goes to dominate, for the first time, the powerful architecture of descending strips, in a fusion with it and thus creating an entirely new space, where people dance, throw themselves on the floor, try to swim or fly, or simply to try the experience of being deep inside the unseizable volume.

This dialog with architecture finds an important precedent in work produced more that ten years before, for the lobby of the UNESCO building in Paris, a singular continuous environment adapting experience, thought as a way to accompany the visitors steps, offering unending encounters and developments, to get the work to the common man, one out of many, under unforeseen situations. Just to mention a few: Usines Renault in Paris (1973). Georges Pompidou Center (1987), the Royal Bank of Canada in Toronto (1977), Montreal 67, the Teresa Carreńo Center for the Performing Arts in Caracas c. 1980) or in many other events and spaces, such as International Fairs in Japan or in Seoul's Olympic Games.

A work of Soto is an experience under any format. Or to use his own words: "art is not an expression, it is knowledge". Soto opens new doors to perception. He shows us not only how to see beyond the lures and appearances, but also to enter the process itself that he creates, that space, that mutating time, that endless energy where "we are immersed".

Soto's process to reveal the invisible structures of reality goes on and expands itself for nearly half a century. This vigorous and steady task admits versatility, when he enters experimental areas such as Ephemeral Art in Pernambuco (Brazil) and Porlamar (Venezuela), where he practically transcribes his propositions to ephemeral and humble supporting elements, and maintains the rigor and the coherence guiding all his research. Working on a civic scale, he increases in his propositions, with the suspending volumes, a way to establish new links between man and his civic condition and, accordingly, to foster other experiences of the environment and reality.

Those who have had the opportunity to see these Suspending Volumes integrated to architecture, hanging in big social spaces or in museums, must have felt that particular presence of transmutation, of dematerializing before their eyes. Those who pass by before these works do perceive how a mass of color is "engendered", flowing from the work, moving with us, in a space that may not be located, in a space that may not even be conceived. This should be, then, a good time to recall Soto's words: "A concern following me all along my plastic research: how to make matter return to its essential value, that is to say to energy…"

Short curriculum

Born in Ciudad Bolívar, Venezuela, in 1923. Art studies in Caracas (1947-50. Lives in Paris since 1950), sharing his time with Caracas since 1972, the city where he now has his main shop.

In Paris he integrates to an intense constructivist movement, retaking the ideas of the Russian pioneers of the first decades, with a new creative will. They exhibit revealing forms such as "Le Mouvement" (Paris 1955 and 1965) y "Bewogen Beweging", in Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (1961). He has realized important individual exhibits in the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (1969). Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels (1969 and 1971), Museum of Modern Art of Chicago, Guggenheim Museum, New York (1974), G. Pompidou Museum (1979), Palacio Velázquez, Madrid (1982), Fundaçao Joan Miró, Barcelona, (1982), as well as the Museums of Bogotám Caracas, Ciudad Bolívars, Kamakura, Saitamanam Iwaki and other in Europe, Asia and America. He has been honored a the Biennials of Sŕo Paulo and Venice, wherehe has also been a Special Guest. Great international salons, biennials and expositions have distinguished his work also.

In Venezuela, he is awarded, in 1960, the National Plastic Art Prize. He has been conferred the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa by the Universities of Oriente (1978), Los Andes (1990) and Guayana (1994). He is a fellow of the Orders of Francisco de Miranda (1983), Antonio José de Sucre (1990) and Andrés Bello (1972). In 1996 he was decorated with the Great Band of the Order of the Liberator.

International awards and prizes distinguish also his cretaive work. Let us just mention a few: The Great Picaaso Medal of UNESCO (19990) and Life Honorary Counselor (1979). France has awarded him the following distinctions: Chevalier de I'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (1968), Membre Titulaire de l'Académie Européenne des Sciences, Arts et Lettres (1986), Médaille de l'Académie d'Architecture (1989 ) and the Grand Prix National de Sculpture of France (1996).