Julio Le Parc review – as if Bridget Riley had opened a riotous funfair

Julio Le Parc’s retrospective at Tate Modern plunges you into 1960s Paris, where avant-garde mischief meets optical play. The show invites touch and movement — Marcel Duchamp’s late title Prière de Toucher (Please Touch) would have made a fitting name — and simple pieces like Pattern to Manipulate reward a spin by collapsing black-and-white abstraction into pure white.

Le Parc, born in Argentina in 1928 and who died on 30 May this year, arrived in Paris in 1958 determined to shake the silence of museums. With his GRAV colleagues he aimed to fill galleries with noise and action, subverting high culture through democratic play.

The comparison to Bridget Riley feels apt: the geometric rigor that warps and shimmers into unexpected perception is pushed further here into physical participation in works such as Screen with Reflective Blades and Ensemble of Eleven Surprise Elements, where pressing buttons sets shelves of found objects juddering and rattling.

France, Paris

julio le, tate modern, retrospective, 1960s paris, bridget riley, marcel duchamp, grav, optical art, interactive art, reflective blades