Flux Music (Pull/Glue) - Paul Sharits

A minimalist conceptual work by Paul Sharits, featuring the text 'PULL / GLUE' on a pale blue field, reflecting the experimental ethos of the Fluxus movement.

Paul Sharits, an artist primarily known for his experimental film work, was a participant in the Fluxus movement during the 1960s. This piece, Flux Music (Pull/Glue), reflects the movement's interest in the intersection of language, performance, and everyday objects. Fluxus artists often sought to remove the barrier between art and life, frequently using simple instructions or text-based scores to prompt action or contemplation.

The composition is stark and minimal. It features a pale blue background with the words 'PULL / GLUE' printed in a small, red, sans-serif typeface at the centre. By presenting these two verbs, Sharits invites the viewer to consider the physical actions implied by the text. The work functions as a score or a conceptual prompt, typical of the Fluxus approach to music and performance, where the traditional boundaries of a musical composition are expanded to include non-musical sounds or physical gestures.

This print is an example of the graphic output produced by Fluxus artists, who often utilised inexpensive printing methods to distribute their ideas widely. The aesthetic is deliberately unadorned, prioritising the conceptual weight of the language over visual complexity. It is a document of a period when artists were actively questioning the nature of the art object and the role of the audience in completing a work. The simplicity of the design allows the viewer to focus entirely on the linguistic relationship between the two words, which suggest a sequence of physical engagement. As a museum-grade print, this reproduction captures the precise colour and typographic clarity of the original, offering a clear window into the conceptual rigour of the Fluxus era.