Soto Seminar: Watch the recording of this collaboration between MASP and ISLAA.

The Soto Seminar, which took place online on November 5, 2025, can now be viewed in full on our YouTube channel. The event brought together leading scholars and curators to reflect on the legacy of Venezuelan artist Jesús Rafael Soto and the reach of his work beyond Latin American borders, underscoring the emergence of alternative discursive centers in the global field.

The seminar was organized by the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP) in partnership with the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA, New York), as part of the preparatory activities for the exhibition dedicated to Soto that will take place at MASP in 2026. The program was supported by Atelier Soto.

ORGANIZED BY
Adriano Pedrosa, Artistic Director, MASP
Mateus Nunes, Assistant Curator, MASP

COORDINATION
Glaucea Helena de Britto, Assistant Curator, MASP

LIVE STREAMING
The seminar was broadcast live on MASP’s and ISLAA’s YouTube channels, with simultaneous translation into Portuguese, English, Spanish, French, and Brazilian Sign Language (LIBRAS).

PROGRAM

November 5, 2025

10:30–10:40 a.m. (8:30–8:40 a.m. EST)
INTRODUCTION
Adriano Pedrosa, Artistic Director, MASP
Ariel Aisiks, Founder and President, ISLAA

10:40 a.m.–12:30 p.m. (8:40–10:30 a.m. EST)

Arnauld Pierre
Beyond Material/Immaterial: Soto’s Antimateriality
This presentation offers a fresh look at the notion of “immateriality” in Soto’s approach to science and art, proposing the concept of “antimateriality,” drawn from quantum physics—a field dear to Soto. This framework illuminates Soto’s engagement with matter and energy in the atomic age and his affinities with contemporaries such as Victor Vasarely and Yves Klein.

Luis Pérez-Oramas
Jesús Soto, Lygia Clark, Hélio Oiticica: Rotation, Nachleben and Return of the Square. Afterlives of Constructive Art in Latin America
Through a detailed analysis of Soto’s Rotación (1952), this lecture examines the “constructive square” as a conceptual and symbolic element in Latin American modernism, exploring parallels with works by Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica and their dialogue with Suprematism.

Moderation: Mateus Nunes, Assistant Curator, MASP

12:30–2:00 p.m. (10:30 a.m.–12:00 p.m. EST)
Break

2:00–3:30 p.m. (12:00–1:30 p.m. EST)

Sean Nesselrode Moncada
Flux Matter: Soto’s Vibrations
This lecture considers vibration as a key operation in Soto’s work, linking matter and energy while situating his practice within the extractive and atomic context of postwar modernity.

Juan Ledezma
Soto’s “Idea of a Country”
Through Soto’s engagement with architecture and abstraction, this talk explores how kinetic art paralleled Venezuelan discourses on social transformation and national identity in the 1960s.

Moderation: Isabela Ferreira Loures, Curatorial Assistant, MASP

3:30–4:30 p.m. (1:30–2:30 p.m. EST)

Paola Santos Coy
Spatial Scores
This lecture explores the intersections between Soto’s work and music, highlighting how vibration operates as an aesthetic and structural principle that connects sound, matter, and perception.

Estrellita B. Brodsky
Displacement as an Aesthetic Strategy: Jesús Soto in Paris, 1950–1970
Focusing on Soto’s Paris years, this lecture examines displacement as both an aesthetic and critical strategy, situating Soto within the transatlantic avant-garde networks that reshaped postwar abstraction.

Moderation: Agustín Diez Fischer, Senior Manager of Research and Archives, ISLAA

4:30–5:30 p.m. (2:30–3:30 p.m. EST)
Break

5:30–6:30 p.m. (3:30–4:30 p.m. EST)

Ariel Jiménez
Jesús Soto: Immaterials
This closing lecture reflects on Soto’s artistic processes between 1949 and 1962, tracing his efforts to render visible the immaterial and energetic forces he believed governed the universe.

Moderation: Fernando Oliva, Curator, MASP