Venezuelan Artist Elias Crespin to Oversee Installation

Kansas City, MO - A dramatic, ever-shifting, hanging sculpture will be installed in Bloch Lobby as The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City continues celebrating its 90th year. Grand HexaNet was created by Venezuelan artist Elias Crespin (b. 1965), who will be in Kansas City to oversee the installation in March.

“This highly nuanced choreographic sculpture constantly shifts and changes, bringing into question the concepts of space, time, movement, and form,” said Julián Zugazagoitia, Director & CEO of the Nelson-Atkins. “Crespin’s work is both mezmerising and complex, inviting us to see and appreciate the architecture of the Bloch building in new ways.”

Grand HexaNet is a large, hexagonal network of red anodized aluminum tubes that extend from one central point of support. The tubes ascend and descend in space, driven by custom software-controlled motors, alternating between harmonious movements and the shattering of the original shape. Its bright red tubular elements move continuously to create a choreographed dance high above visitors’ heads.

“My largest sculpture so far, Grand HexaNet materializes complex mathematical figures, exploring the interaction between flatness and volume, order and chaos, continuity and rupture,” said Crespin. “The frail, bright red elements of the moving sculpture then draw a delicate ballet in the air and invite the viewer to stop and contemplate its dance, reconfiguring its perception of the exhibition space.”

Crespin’s sculptures have been shown around the world and have entered collections of important institutions such as the Musée du Louvre, Paris, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and El Museo del Barrio in New York.

“Grand HexaNet’s ability to gracefully transform and become something new again and again in the heart of the museum will become a signifier for the changes the institution itself has undergone during its nine decades as the heart of visual culture in Kansas City, as well serving as an emblem of evolutions to come,” said Stephanie Fox Knappe, Sanders Sosland Senior Curator, Global Modern and Contemporary Art and Head, American Art.

Born in Caracas, Venezuela, he was trained as a computer engineer. His parents were mathematicians, and his grandparents were artists; Crespin’s work perfectly integrates these universes of science and art. Crespin lives and works in Paris.

Grand HexaNet was most recently on view at the Grand Palais in Paris and will be on view at the Nelson-Atkins on March 28. It was acquired through the generosity of the William T. Kemper Foundation and the William Rockhill Nelson Trust through the George H. and Elizabeth O. Davis Fund.

Crespin will be on hand on March 28 when Grand HexaNet is activated for the public for the first time.