Bernar Venet’s intervention in the development of art over the last five years has led to the affirmation of an objective, rational approach, sweeping aside the idealistic tradition and paving the way for the most uncompromising research currently being carried out in conceptual art. From 1965 onwards, Venet produced illustrations, first handwritten, then photographic, of pages from scientific books, always chosen from among the most recent and comprehensive. To make these selections, Venet enlisted the help of specialists, sometimes even asking them to give lectures. His presentation no longer satisfies the ambiguity of a style – the artist’s interpretation of the data of reality – but the clarity and functional adaptability of the most diverse media: blow-ups, magnetic tapes, discs, books, magazines, etc. Nothing is added to the artist’s style. Nothing is added to the original meaning of the proposal; it admits of only one level of reading. In the current exhibition, Venet is focusing on language, exhibiting several chapters of a grammar book.
Catherine Millet, Les Lettres françaises, February 17, 1971

It could be said of Louis Cane’s work that he doesn’t make a “sheet”, but first and foremost a “canvas”. From one to the other, this passage is not self-evident: it’s a path that leads from sensitive/visible knowledge – the folds of the sheet – to logical/scientific knowledge, complex and endlessly repeated, of the canvas – through the folds, cuts, seams and colors; sheet/canvas; the two edges, internal and external, at work in painting. This knowledge cannot be acquired outside the activity of production: productivity as a return to the seed of meaning and subject – vertical canvas/sheet – and as the engendering of the pictorial fabric – horizontal sheet/canvasA process of reading/writing, from sheet to canvas and vice versa, through texture – a double operation using the thread of the fabric as a formal method of communication (geometry, surface structure) and the thread of the knife, the chisel cutting into the color, as a differential method of production (number, volume of colors). Engendering the canvas as the effect of its own cause (metonymic causality), a calculated operation whose sum is not without remainder: color being the reserve opening to the repetition of its different imprints (metaphors), in a transfinite series where each canvas can be the same and – contradictorily – other; a structure/color, surface/volume relationship that is not cause and effect but difference.
Marc Devade, Excerpt from the exhibition catalog, 1971

The Lecher system consists of two parallel wires carrying a high-frequency radio wave. The wave is reflected at the far end, producing static waves. At voltage and current antinodes, i.e. where voltage and current differences are greatest, this phenomenon can be detected by appropriate means. These voltage antinodes are separated by half a wavelength, as are the current antinodes, but they are displaced by a quarter wavelength along the wires. In other words, for a wavelength of 1 m, there would be an antinode every 25 cm, alternately voltage-current, voltage-current, etc. At certain points, which are the voltage antinodes, the voltage difference between the two wires will be at its maximum. At other points, current antinodes can be detected by connecting a 1.5-volt electric lamp bulb to both wires. The bulb holder is connected to two rigid wires and inserted into a test tube which acts as a handle. Holding the hand carefully away from the Lecher wires, the bulb is pushed along the connecting wires and the points where the bulb lights most brightly are noted.
Exhibition’s text, 1971

Two-step drawing transfer. From Erik to Dennis Oppenheim, 1971
As Erik draws a line on my back, I try to reproduce his movement on the wall. His activity stimulates a kinetic response in my sensory system. So he’s drawing “through” me. The sensory shift or disorientation is the difference between the two drawings and can be interpreted as elements activated during the procedure. Because Erik is my son, and we share certain biological traits, my back (my surface) can be likened to a mature version of his. In a sense, he’s getting in touch with his future state.
Dennis Oppenheim, excerpt from Dennis Oppenheim catalog, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 1974