robert irwin: light and space

September 17 — October 19, 2008

For his exhibition at White Cube Mason’s Yard, Irwin has created two new installations. On the ground floor, Black³ features a series of floor-to-ceiling parallel scrim material panels, which the viewer must navigate, thereby altering the perceptual field of the space. In addition, Irwin has made subtle adjustments to the optical conditions of the room, as a means of altering the phenomenological experience of the work. Positioned on the west and east walls are two square lacquered black paintings, echoes of which reverberate through the space, transmitted on and through the perpendicular translucent screens.

In Light and Space II, located in the basement gallery, Irwin has created an installation with hundreds of fluorescent lights mounted at right angles in a non-repeating, grid-like formation. With no fixed focal point, the enveloping visual field resonates with geometric patterns, drawn by luminous lines, which redefine the characteristics of the space. Light and Space II brings together, in a large-scale but concise installation, the three principle points of reference throughout Irwin’s career: light, architecture and space.

christo and jean-claude; wrapping stuff

Although their work is visually impressive and often controversial as a result of its scale, the artists have repeatedly denied that their projects contain any deeper meaning than their immediate aesthetic. The purpose of their art, they contend, is simply to create works of art or joy and beauty and to create new ways of seeing familiar landscapes. Art critic David Bourdon has described Christo's wrappings as a "revelation through concealment."[3]To his critics Christo replies, "I am an artist, and I have to have courage ... Do you know that I don't have any artworks that exist? They all go away when they're finished. Only the preparatory drawings, and collages are left, giving my works an almost legendary character. I think it takes much greater courage to create things to be gone than to create things that will remain."[4]

james turrell; skyspace

For over three decades, James Turrell has used light and indeterminate space—not objects or images—to extend and enhance perception. The artist once remarked, "I am really interested in the qualities of one space sensing another. It is like looking at someone looking. Objectivity is gained by being once removed. As you plumb a space with vision, it is possible to 'see yourself see'. This seeing, this plumbing, imbues space with consciousness."
The work of James Turrell (b. 1943, Los Angeles) has been the subject of over 140 solo exhibitions worldwide since 1967. In addition to a permanent installation at the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle and The Nasher Sculpture Garden, Dallas, which opened October 2003, permanent installations of James Turrell's work are on view in several museums including: The Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh; Museum fur Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, Germany; Museum of Fine Art, Houston; Panza Collection, Varese, Italy; P.S. 1. Long Island City, New York; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Arizona; and the Springel Museum, Hanover, Germany.
Since 1972 Turrell has been transforming the Roden Crater, a natural cinder volcano situated on the southwestern edge of the Painted Desert in northern Arizona into a large-scale artwork. Through the medium of light, the piece relates to the surrounding sky, land, and culture. As an observatory, the Roden Crater will allow visitors to see celestial phenomena with the naked eye. Construction of the project is under the direction of the Dia Art Foundation and the Skystone Foundation with support from the Lannan Foundation.
Since 1968 when Turrell received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, the artist has been the recipient of a total of nineteen awards ranging from The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (1984) to being named a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government (1991). For six consecutive years, from 1997 to 2002, Turrell was given six various prizes and awards and three honorary doctorates from the Chicago Art Institute (1999); Claremont Graduate University, California (2001); and the Royal Academy of Art, London (2002).
James Turrell has a B.A. in psychology from Pomona College. He attended graduate art classes at the University of California, Irvine from 1965-1966 and received an M.A. from Claremont Graduate School in 1973. The artist currently lives in Flagstaff, Arizona.

james turrell; playing with light

The piece consists of a beautifully lit square room with walls lined by benches and a rectangular opening cut into its roof. Meeting, like many of Turrell’s pieces, shapes the act of perception using the medium of a nearly tangible light, allowing viewers to experience the development of their own sensory responses over time.
Writer Ina Cole captured the viewer’s experience perfectly in this description in Art Times, “Certainly, the sense of disorientation felt once inside Turrell’s configurations is profound, as the distinction between solid and void areas is often unclear; even after the eyes and brain become accustomed, a sensation of altered states prevails for the entire time spent in the structure.”
For the summer of 2008 P.S.1 is delighted to have on view a remarkable work that succeeds both in complement and contrast to Meeting. Olafur Eliasson’s Take your time, which can also be found on the third floor, consists of a massive, rotating mirror affixed to the ceiling of an otherwise empty room.

With its precise skew and motion it plays with both vertical and horizontal orientation, creating multiple inversions of both space and self. The Danish-Icelandic artist’s work often recontextualizes existing architectural elements to shift perceptions of the places in which they have been placed. With the two pieces in such close proximity in one building allows for a delicious and challenging personal inquiry. Interestingly, during his early artistic training, Eliasson was influenced heavily by the California Light and Space movement of the 1960s and ‘70s, of which Turrell is often seen as a leading figure. Eliasson, like Turrell, creates environments that are meant to be entered and experienced, awakening viewers to their own modes of perception and the power of environment to bring such understanding into view.
When questioned about the meaning of his works, Turrell has often responded by saying, “It is about how you confront space and plumb it. It is about your seeing.” Eliasson subsequently declares that “There is no fixed interpretation of my works. Everyone experiences and understands them in his own way.”

slinky light

Slinky like light pattern in the blackness of moonlight sky produced by a time exposure of the light tipped rotor blades of a grounded helicopter as it takes off into the dark sky”, says Life. Images by Andreas Feininger. More here. Via But Does it Float.

The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mystical. It is the power of all true art and science. ( Albert Einstein, 1947)

rachel whiteread; casting, rubber and polystrene

In her castings from common objects, British sculptor Rachel Whiteread proposes a reverence for the everyday. Among her unique monumentalizations are mattresses, furniture, and bathtubs. To greater or lesser degrees, these sculptures resemble their household counterparts yet, as art, they have a different status. First of all, they are nonfunctional; they exist to be seen. In looking at them, routines are dislocated; our relationship with the object on view may become more self-conscious or assume a fresh significance.

In Untitled (Yellow Bath), cast from an old tub, a gentle hollow familiar to all bathers makes a concave protective subject. Site of respite, dreams, and cleansing, the tub, for all its sculptural bulk, exudes intimacy. Its translucency simultaneously heightens and denies the work's tactility: when lighted, it glows but repels touch. As the negative of a worn object, Whiteread's cast shows the inverse of a familiar surface as well as a geometrized block of surrounding space.

robert morris ; untitled, felt work

I like this work, made in felt, which is a soft material but in such a sculpture it takes on a quite solid look, probably due to the thickness of the felt. In some of his other work, for example his plywood polyhydrons, he create minimalist sculpture that is very architectural in its presentation.

anya gallaccio -ice piece

Not sure of the title of this piece, need to research it more, but I'm beginning to like work in ice.

'Cast,' Anya Gallaccio
Materials: Acorns: Quercus Robur and Quercus Rubra; one unique cast bronze acorn; box.Size: 6 x 6 x 2.3 inches.Edition: 35

"Cast" brings together a handful of real English acorns and one unique cast bronze acorn in a box specially produced by BookWorks for the project. The buyer is invited to plant the acorns for the future, keep them to dry out and die or throw them away, leaving only the cast acorn. "Cast" has both the association with throwaway culture and that of permanence.

In 2002 Anya Gallaccio installed seven felled oak trees in the monumental space of the Duveen Galleries at Tate Britain. Stripped of their branches but with their bark intact these powerful structures continued Gallaccio's dialogue between "nature" and "culture", "permanence" and "ephemerality".

The English oak tree symbolises tradition, permanence and value. The oak doesn't even reach its prime until it is at least 100 years old. This association of the oak with the long-term - much longer than human life - contrasts markedly with the short-term nature of contemporary life.

ARTISTS INFO:

Scottish artist Anya Gallaccio was shortlisted for the Turner Prize 2003.

She has had recent solo shows at Camden Arts Centre (2008), Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, Thomas Dane Gallery, London (2007), Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York, the Centro Arte Contemporanea, Siena and the Sculpture Center, Long Island (2006).

Her work is featured in numerous public and private collections such as the Tate Gallery, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, and South London Gallery, London.

robert smithson; nonsite works

An example of Smithson's nonsite work, Mono Lake. Used here to illustrate research for installation workshop in Jan 2010.