In both this three-dimensional construction and the accompanying prints, Michael Kidner has pulled and distorted an elastic membrane to create unpredictable effects. The work recalls Bauhaus and Constructivist experiments from the 1920s: dynamic geometric constructions of wood and industrial materials. But as an Op Artist (who was included in William Seitz’s seminal 1965 Op Art exhibition The Responsive Eye at the Museum of Modern Art in New York), Kidner also had a sustained interest in creating optical movement through waves and moiré patterns, in this case by often superimposing grids over each other. In many of these pieces, curves and circles are foils to straight diagonal lines, and both contrast with the stability of a recurring underlying grid. In one untitled lithograph, by stretching the membrane over an inverted clothes hanger he warps the square and circle embroidered on its surface. A similar dynamism is evident in the repeated curved and straight edges in the wood—and in the very wood grain itself—in the lithograph Relief Continuous. The shallow space and direct lighting in these photographs work to create a trompe l’oeil effect in which the objects appear dimensional at times.
–When We Were Young: Rethinking Abstraction From The University At Albany Art Collections (1967-Present)