1950S–1960S KINETIC ABSTRACTION
Andrea Rosen Gallery

Founded in Dusseldorf in 1957, the Zero Group became one of the first international art movements of the postwar era, with adherents in several countries across Western Europe. Reacting to the histrionics of Abstract Expressionism and Art Informel, the artists of Zero explored phenomena of motion and light with casual, nontraditional materials. As it happened, it was also the first movement to capture the attention of the prominent German collectors Rolf and Erika Hoffmann. Now, four decades later, it has inspired Ms. Hoffman to collaborate on Andrea Rosen’s installation of eight kinetic pieces produced between 1959 and 1965.

At first glance, the installation has an almost clinical austerity; except for a few metallic surfaces, virtually every surface is white or black, and the gallery’s large space overwhelms the intimacy of some of the pieces. Up close, though, the playfulness of the works becomes apparent, and they invite prolonged examination. Gerhard von Graevenitz’s 3-foot-wide white disc turns at glacial speed, causing dozens of tiny winged metallic elements to spin, casting delicate shadows and reflections. François Morellet’s work consists of a thread, some 30 feet long, connecting the gallery’s ceiling — where a motor continuously rotates it at high speed — to a small weight just touching the floor. Multiple shallow waves swell hypnotically up and down the thread as it spins. Jean Tinguely, best known for his large sculpture that self-destructed at the Museum of Modern Art in 1960, is represented here by a far calmer piece consisting of five white rectangles revolving, like the hands of the Dada clock, above a black surface.

A rectangle turning behind the rippled glass front of Heinz Macks’ 4-foot-wide box seems to constantly metamorphose between a diamond and a square. Other works generate an optical buzz through decidedly low-tech means: Thin rods dangle in front of a grid of fine horizontal lines in a work by Jesús Rafaël Soto, while Julio Le Parc has suspended hundreds of shiny black squares to create a curtain of shifting reflections.

My favorites, though, are Hartmut Böhm’s grid of magnetized chips that endlessly bounce within tiny plastic compartments. As industrious as a beehive, its soft clicks permeate the gallery. And best of all is Gianni Colombo’s grid of shopworn polystyrene blocks, which seems to do nothing at all — until one observes them shifting and twitching with magisterial slowness. Like every work here, it’s content to share the oddest permutations of ordinary materials.

Until August 24 (525 W. 24th St., between Tenth and Eleventh avenues, 212-627-6000).