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Exhibition Spotlight: Jerry T. Okimoto's Mobile Painting #17 in Giant Steps: Artists and the 1960s

July 26, 2018

Jerry T. Okimoto (American, 1924–1998). Mobile Painting #17, 1963. Acrylic on canvas, 20 3/4 x 39 1/4 inches (52.7 x 99.7 cm). Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; Gift of Seymour H. Knox, Jr., 1963 (K1963:20). © Estate of Jerry Tsukio Okimoto

Jerry Okimoto is one of several artists featured in Giant Steps: Artists and the 1960s (on view through January 6, 2019) who during this decade experimented with kinetic art: paintings and sculptures designed to move on their own or be set in motion by others. As seen in the video below, a member of the museum's staff rearranges the composition of Okimoto's Mobile Painting #17 weekly.

While at first glance Mobile Painting #17 appears to be a completely flat surface, the blue square in fact sits in a channel in front of the red and yellow squares and can be moved left or right to reconfigure the composition. The time-lapse video below captures the work's full range of motion.