Light Installations

Our Light Installations exhibitions feature 12 artists utilizing industrial fluorescent light, projections, LED tubes and circuitry. A pioneer of making art with industrial fluorescent light tubes, Dan Flavin is featured with his traditional multicolored grid of light in Untitled (A tribute to Harold Joachim 2) (1977). As curator Jeffery Weiss has noted, Flavin's light works are neither painting nor sculpture, but both. By pulling the optical nature of color and light from painting and using light to create the spatial aspects of sculpture, Flavin transforms his works into an immersive experience. The exhibition also includes Column 6 (2005), a large-scale Leo Villareal wall piece that uses light sequencing which mimics patterns and forms of nature. Villareal has had large installations along the Bay Bridge in San Francisco and outside institutions such as MoMA PS1, New York and the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa. Additionally, we are happy to present a light box by Doug Aitken with an image of several architectural models made out of Fedex boxes. The designs are inspired by brutalist and utopian architecture by famous architects such as Mies Van der Rohe, Buckminster Fuller, and Le Courbousier. Iván Navarro also draws from the modern examples from the 20th century, as his Silla Electrica Azul Y Roja (Electric Chair Blue And Red) (2003) is inspired by the 1918 chair made by Gerrit Rietveld titled Red and Blue Chair. Navarro's take, recreated in fluorescent lights not only recalls this modern design but the electric chair used for capital punishment. The artwork is one of two presentations by Navarro, the other being his video and illuminated wheelbarrow installation Flashlight: I Am Not From Here, I Am Not From There (purple) (2006). Among other works, we are also pleased to display Dervish 2 (2004) by Jennifer Steinkamp an early pioneer of 3D animation. In the animation, a tree dances and swirls in a similar way to the dervishes of the Mevlevi sect of Islam who rhythmically and meditatively twirl around in a trance in an attempt to connect their soul with the divine. The men wear long robes resembling skirts which Steinkamp has represented by the branches and leaves of the tree. This early work of hers signals an ongoing thread in her practice of drawing connections from technology to the unique communication methods of trees and the natural world.