Light

__________
Claude Lévêque
‘The title of the exhibition refers to a song by the American rock group The Cramps. The fly’s field of vision approaches 360° and the insect can break down the movement of an immediate threat through an ability to perceive almost ten times more images per second than a human being. Its augmented vision is directly linked to the sensory paroxysms that are one aspect of the installation.’

Human Fly (2019)

 

_________
Michel François

Walk Through a Line of Neon Lights (2019)
Watch here

 

_________
Keith Sonnier
‘Employing unusual materials that had never before been used, Sonnier, along with his contemporaries, Bruce Nauman, Richard Tuttle, Eva Hesse, Richard Serra, and Barry Le Va, called all previous conceptions of sculpture into question. Sonnier has experimented with materials as varied as latex, satin, bamboo, found objects, satellite transmitters, and video. In 1968, the artist began working with neon, which quickly became a defining element of his work. The linear quality of neon allows Sonnier to draw in space with light and color, while the diffuseness of the light enables his work to interact on various architectural planes.’

Mat Key and Radio Track (1972)

Lightbulb and Fire (1970)

 

________
Meghan Young
‘The Symphony in D Minor installation manages to capture the raw beauty of a thunderstorm in four cylindrical sculptures suspended 40 feet from the ceiling. Displaying rain drops and dark clouds, the imagery and sound is intensified when the installation detects movement. As soon as a person touches the sculptures, all hell breaks loose. Projections of rain and electrical charges are sent through the space.’

Symphony in D Minor (2012)

 

__________
Leo Villareal
‘Leo Villareal works with pixels and binary code to create complex, rhythmic compositions in light. Firmly rooted in abstraction, his approach uses layered sequencing that results in open-ended and subjective visual experiences. Villareal’s works often reference organic systems and evoke—but do not illustrate—atmospheric elements in that emergent and unexpected behavior occurs without a predetermined outcome. Interested in identifying the rules and governing structures of systems, Villareal uses custom, artist-created code to constantly change the frequency, intensity, and patterning of LED lights. For Villareal, the essence and medium of his work is code; light and its phenomenological effect is its visible manifestation.’

Cylinder 2 (2012)

Cosmos 4 (2013)

 

________
Paul Chan
‘Chan described the series The 7 Lights (2005-07) as “hallucinating the seven days of creation from dawn to dusk”. His projections included visions of floating objects and falling bodies that drew on themes of the Apocalypse and Revelation, as well as referencing images and events from our contemporary world. The exhibition title referred to light, and in particular to light that had been ‘struck out’. The tension between the two is central to the artist’s practice.’

1st Light (2007)

 

________
Bruce Nauman
‘Nauman enforces the contrast between the perceptual and physical experience of space in his sculptures and installations. Looking at the brilliant color emanating from Green Light Corridor (1970) prompts quite a different phenomenological experience than does maneuvering through its narrow confines.’

Green Light Corridor (1970)

 

_______
Kyle McDonald & Jonas Jongejan
‘Kyle McDonald and Jonas Jongejan filled a darkened room with fifty disco balls and created colored and timed lighting sequences to cast mesmerizing reflections that surround visitors. However, rather than simply relying on scattershot reflections, McDonald and Jongejan used hundreds of structured light scans to capture the volumetric position of every pixel being projected by each of the three projectors. The pair then used SketchUp to predict the reflected pixel positions.’

Light Leaks (2014)

 

______
Unknown

Town Without Pity/Audrey Horne (2013)

 

_______
Mona Hatoum
‘Home consists of a long table covered with gleaming metal kitchen appliances. The table has a polished wooden top and heavy metal legs on wheels. The industrial connotations of the table are offset by the domestic kitchen utensils on its surface, including graters, scissors, a colander, a whisk, a ladle, salad servers, a sieve, a pasta maker, presses and a heart-shaped pastry cutter. Wires snake through the installation, connected to each utensil with crocodile clips. The wires conduct electrical currents to the objects periodically illuminating small light bulbs positioned beneath the sieve and colander and inside an upright grater. The current is controlled by a software programme that alters the frequency and intensity of the lights. Speakers amplify the crackling sound of electricity coursing through the wires and the metal objects. The sculpture is set back behind a barrier of thin horizontal steel wires that separates the viewer from the potentially lethal current.’

Home (1999)

 

___________
Erwin Redl
‘Erwin Redl, an Austrian-born artist based in Bowling Green, Ohio and New York City, is best known for large-scale light installations for art museums, public buildings and corporations. His work transforms the medium of light into immersive, tangible experiences for viewers. His architectural environments translate complex mathematical algorithms and other methods inspired by computer code into contemplative, minimalist spaces further activated by his use of motion and rhythmic sequencing.’

Ascension (line 24), 2014

 

___________
Atsuko Tanaka
‘Atsuko Tanaka, (born Feb. 10, 1932, Osaka, Japan—died Dec. 3, 2005, near Nara, Japan), Japanese artist who , was a leading avante-garde artist, best known for her experimental works of the 1950s and ’60s. Tanaka was an early member of Gutai, a radical group of Osaka-based artists founded in 1954. Many of Tanaka’s works involved electric light, the most famous of which, Electric Dress (1956), was made entirely of coloured light bulbs, cords, and fluorescent tubes that she wore as a dress during performances.’

Electric Dress (1956)

 

___________
A.F.Vandevorst
‘A.F.Vandevorst have sculpted a life-size sculpture of a sleeping woman. This wax woman embedded with 250 kg of candle wicks was made by Lenn Cox.’

 

___________
Jason Ferguson
‘Domestic Carnival is an ongoing project that takes the specific rooms of a home and re-presents them as flashing amusement park rides, transforming intimate interior spaces into objects of mass spectacle. Within the room dark and foreboding music, two hundred pulsing lights, steel joists, and a trailer combine with a dining room table, chairs, and oak hardwood flooring to create a carnival that is both familiar and uncanny. The apparatus is engineered like a carnival ride; the entire sculpture is mounted on a custom trailer that collapses for transportation to its next destination.’

Domestic Carnival: Dining Room (2019)

 

________
Dan Flavin
‘In 1963, Dan Flavin began working with the medium of light: functional fluorescent tubes exhibited in their original state, without alteration or decoration.’

Demo for Installation of LED tubes

 

_______
Sherrie Levine
‘Cast stainless steel. “I want to put a picture on top of a picture,” Levine says. “This makes for times when both disappear and other times when they’re both visible.”’

Light Bulb (2000)

 

_______
Ed Atkins
‘Atkins is best known for works like Ribbons (2014), featuring iterations of drunken, soliloquy-spouting male protagonists who ruminate on perennial (and currently unfashionable) topics like love, loss, and loneliness. His work Even Pricks (2013) takes a slightly different tack. Atkins evokes his signature mood of quiet desperation with comparably spare methods, stringing together a series of vignettes that seem as indebted to the trippy avant-garde films of the 1960s as they do video-game cutscenes and contemporary cinematic tropes.’

Even Pricks (2013)

 

________
TUNDRA
‘TUNDRA is a St.Petersburg based collaborative artist collective focused on creating spaces and experiences by exploring facets of interaction between audio/visual and human emotions. We specialise in multi-media performances and immersive audiovisual installations. Our multidisciplinary team involves musicians, sound engineers, programmers and visual artists. The team is known for works presented at festivals and museums of multi-media art in America, Europe, Russia, and Asia.’

Row (2020)

THE DAY WE LEFT FIELD (2019)

Nomad (2018)

TUNDRA x JAGUAR (2018)

 

________
Otto Piene
‘In 1957, Piene developed the Grid Picture, a type of stencilled painting made from half-tone screens with regularly arranged points in single colors (yellow, silver, white, or gold), for example Pure Energy (1958, New York, MOMA). Piene’s work then developed in a variety of forms. The Lichtballette (“light ballet”, 1959) was a development of the Grid Pictures; light from moving lamps was projected through grids, thus extending and stimulating the viewer’s perception of space.’

Light Ballet (1969)

 

_________
David Batchelor
‘Batchelor is interested in the colours that you find rather than the ones that you make. So he’s been picking up discarded light boxes that typically advertise shops and restaurants (and that, he says, are one of the main sources of colour in a city), cleaned them up and mounted them to form a tall sculpture he called Magic Hour. The colours emanating from the light boxes are glowing against the wall and the public only see their reflection shining back at them.’

Magic Hour (2004-2007)

 

________
Leo Pyrata

 

_____________
Diana Thater
‘Featuring honeybees and a hive made of multicolored hexagons, knots + surfaces addresses a recent mathematical hypothesis that correlates a six-dimensional spatial model to the map of a honeybee’s dance. I’m working with animals that exist as individuals and as part of a complex social network that functions as a unit. Here, I feature the erasure of the video rectangle in order to create a multipart, puzzle-like image. Initially, the many components seem to form a single picture. However, when viewers walk into the projections, they penetrate the “bee space”; the one picture breaks into five and the surrounding bees become a vision of chaos.’

Knots + Surfaces (2001)

 

________
Larry Bell
‘One of the most significant artists of his generation, Larry Bell (b. 1939, Chicago) is an important representative of a West Coast minimalism that uses commercial and industrial materials and forms to create intense sensorial experiences. Best known for minimalist sculptures—transparent cubes and sprawling glass installations that thrive on the interplay of shape, light, and environment—Bell is considered a champion of the ideas of the Light and Space Movement of the 1960s. For decades, Bell has explored the new materials and modes of production developed by the military. His work during and after this period also reflects an interest in the scientific and technological experimentation taking place in Southern California. Hydrolux (1986) is complex fountain with live video projects, the work skews perception and critically invokes the viewer. As Bell’s only water-based sculpture that was executed beyond the model stage, Hydrolux demonstrates Bell’s constant inquiry into innovation, audience engagement, the surreal, and the sublime.’

Hydro lux (1986)

 

_______
James Clar
‘James Clar is a media artist whose work is a fusion of technology, popular culture, and visual information. Actually, his work is an analysis and observation on the affects of media and technology on our perception of culture, nationality, and identity. His interest is in new technology and production processes, using them as a medium, while analyzing and critiquing their modifying affects on human behavior.’

Dynomite (2006)

 

_______
Kitty Kraus
‘The inherent fragility of Kraus’s mediums betrays established ideas about the stability and longevity of sculptural form. Such flaws are seen in Untitled (2006), in which illuminated lightbulbs are frozen inside ink-dyed ice cubes. Installed in the gallery at room temperature, the ice slowly melts, producing a meandering puddle of watered-down ink on the gallery floor, eventually leaving behind a stained and patterned path of dried ink.’

Untitled (2006)

 

_______
Ryota Kuwakubo
‘On the front of a model train running around a darkened room is a small, lit-up LED light. As the train moves slowly along its route, small and large objects are projected onto the walls and ceiling. Due to the movement of the light source, the shadows of the stationary objects appear to move, leaving viewers with the impression that they are passengers riding on the train.’

The Tenth Sentiment (2010)

 

____________
Nasan Tur
‘A room with a wall in flames. Although the fire burns incessantly, contrary to expectations it does not spread.’

Fire (2017)

 

_______
Gavin Turk
‘I first came to notice the Gerhard Richter painting (Kerze, 1983) in 1988 when it was used on the album cover of Daydream Nation by Sonic Youth. It seemed to extend the mood of the music and got lodged in my subconscious; now more than 30 years later, this feeling of pathos has started to reappear in my work.’ — Gavin Turk’

Kerze (2022)

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** Carsten, Now it’s Spain against France. Because I like how wild everyone here goes when France wins the big futbol prize, I’m voting for us. Dealbreakers re: Marseilles. It’s way too hot there for me. I also don’t like the hilly build. That’s one of the reasons I don’t like San Francisco. And I’ve been fortunate to live all my life in big cities where there is lots of fast changing international culture (music, art film, theater, etc.) within quick reach, and I would be bored and unhappy if that weren’t the case. ** jay, Hi! Yes, Philip Best has gone on to arguably even better things. If I don’t get 8 hours of sleep at night, I’m a dead duck above the neck. I have a distressingly fascist body clock. But you sound okay. The Tati was sold out, so we didn’t get to go. Boo. ** Adem Berbic, Vital, what more could one wish to institute. Thank you. For me the problem with ‘bludgeon’ is it eliminates nuance and detail in its recipient. I like being bludgeoned by music, but there’s not much aftermath. Maybe ‘excoriate’? That’s more interactive while still way harsh. Yours is an interesting goal for writing assuming there’s sufficient thought and calculation in any case. Yes, how was your friend’s power electronics debut? Those with new boobs obviously know best. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Amsterdam living in the winter when there are no tourists is a grim thing, at least if you’re not Dutch. Yes, Ange’s wedding was four metro stops away, but then the party was at some house in the middle of nowhere. (I skipped it because I hate parties and it was a zillion degrees that day). I’ve sometimes wondered if people use sunscreen as a sexual lubricant, and, if not, why not? Maybe love wonders that too. Love boringly but desperately pleading with the manager of my building to fix the fucking broken elevator because climbing four flights of stairs in this heat is not suitable for someone who smokes cigarettes, G. ** Steve, Not that I know of. Or not to me at least. Maybe to Sypha himself? Hm on ‘Black Chariot’. Ah, a great new reason to stay in my shitty air-conditioning. Everyone, Steve’s new episode is yours to borrow! Here he is to characterise: ‘Swim with the orcas to art pop, psych, hip-hop and more on the latest episode of “Radio Not Radio”. This one features Ibeyi, Hanbee, Bia Soull & d. silvestre, Faye Wong, Vi, Cold Riot, Pomelo, Madonna, Penelope Trappes, Feeble Little Horse, F/i, Hash Jar Tempo, Slift, Sleep, Trad Gras och Stenar, Odyssey Cult, Baba Zula, Selda, Vince Staples, Kneecap, Matt Proxy, mary sue, Maiya The Don, Earthsignchels, Parallel Though, Paris, Edén Carrasco & Sara Zlanabitnig, and Patricia Brennan & Sylvie Courvoisier.’ ** julian, Hey there! This summer has been a plan killer, at least over here, so no problem. I’m happy the Whitehouse shebang intersected with you. I’m good, overly heated, but good. I’d have to guess at what I was listening to particularly when writing Frisk, which would have been 1987-1990 roughly. Uh, memory says Sonic Youth, Glenn Branca, Fugazi, Boredoms, … gosh, I wish I had my notes here. Thank you a lot for reading the novel! ** horatio, Howdy, horatio! Really good to see you! That’s heady and seemingly very exciting about the crushed on/crush bearing guy. Good madness, right? I do of course really like that Neutral Milk Hotel album, yes. I think I’m going to listen to it again right about now actually, so thank you. Describe your madness and, well, anything else if you feel like it. xo. ** _Black_Acrylic, Right, that interview. Everyone. Mr. William Bennett of Whitehouse and subsequently Cut Hands was interviewed by our very own _Black_Acrylic some years ago for his and others’ legendary, much missed zine Yuck ‘n Yum, and I obviously highly encourage you to go partake in their conversation. Do so here. Ridiculous that taxi services aren’t readily prepared for wheel chair using customers at this point in time. I did hear about England. An England vs. France final? That could be ugly, haha. ** Bill, I see Sypha popping up on Facebook every once in a while. He seems like him. The Tati screening was sold out, so we didn’t go. Surprising, but I think a big air-conditioned theater and Tati must’ve proved too luxurious to the heat sufferers, understandably. Back East again, ah. I don’t even want to think about that heat. You’re a toughy, dude. ** CHARLIEZACKS, Hi. Oh, okay, give me a few days to get through this heatwave because I’m a bit sluggish at the moment. ** Uday, That makes sense. The term delineation. I seriously don’t think you could be a plebeian even if you dressed as one for Halloween. I don’t think you need to be an artist to know really interesting people. Being interested in art helps. Some of the most inspiring people aren’t artists. No sweat, pal. ** HaRpEr //, Sypha was the master of inhumanly big posts. There’s a live Sparks album coming out? Wow, great, that makes so much sense. Oh, yeah, Spicer is great. For some reason my very favorite mini-collection of his ‘Billy the Kid’. It tests its own sentimentality in a really interesting way. ** laura w, My imagination says that being on an island at a wedding could be relaxing because everyone would ostensibly be happy and being around happy people is usually relaxing, I think. Although you being the sister could throw a wrench into that, I guess. Sorry about Norway. Yeah, Paris will go nuts if France wins, and I like when Paris goes nuts, so I’m on board. My weekend was okay considering the heat. Just saw friends, went to an ice cream parlor, a lot of walking on the shady side of the street. Thanks about ‘The Anal-Retentive Line Editor’. If I do end up doing the Selected book, that one’s on the list. I don’t know Rhythm Heaven, but you’ve easily convinced me to go find out what it is. Thank you! ** kenley, Hi, kenley! I’ve been wondering how you are there in still relatively new Montreal. High five or low five on our mutual sweltering. I am so over it. Belgium was nice, and more recently Holland/Amsterdam was nice. I was gifted homemade stroop waffles, which was happy making. My Parisian exploits are pretty hampered by the heat, but they say it’ll get back to just normal summer warm in a few days, so there’s still time. How are you countering the aggressive sun? ** Right. It could be argued that there’s already too much light around at the moment, but here’s some more. See you tomorrow.