Optical Allusion

British painter Bridget Riley’s ambition is to produce nothing less than “untrammeled perception.” Ms. Riley’s earliest investigations of optical effects made her a major figure of the Op Art movement of the 1960s. Her black-and-white pattern paintings appeared to vibrate and provoked strong, sometimes nauseating psychological and physiological effects. Since her first solo exhibition in 1962 in London, Ms. Riley has continued to be an influential investigator of abstract painting’s potential to reclaim what a viewer sees in the fleeting moments before comprehension gains control of the mind’s faculties. In the last decade, she has been the subject of several retrospectives, including one organized by the Tate Britain, and her art is held in public collections around the world. Throughout her career, Ms. Riley’s interest in sensation has been predominantly focused on movement, and as her current exhibition at PaceWildenstein demonstrates, Ms. Riley deftly transforms the flat canvas support into undulating, vibrant surfaces of color and light.