ARTISTs
DO HO SUH @ VICTORIA MIRO - LONDON
'Inspired by his peripatetic life, Do Ho Suh has long ruminated on the idea of home as both a physical structure and a lived experience, the boundaries of identity and the connection between the individual and the group across global cultures. Meticulously replicating the architecture of the places in which he has lived and worked, such as his childhood home in South Korea and Western apartments and studios, Suh's one-to-one scale translucent fabric structures give form to ideas about migration, transience and shifting identities. These ideas are further conveyed in his hub works, where transitory connecting spaces between rooms, such as vestibules and corridors, speak passage of the artist's own life. "I see life as a passageway, with no fixed beginning or destination," says Suh. "We tend to focus on the destination all the time and forget about the in-between spaces. But without these mundane spaces that nobody really pays attention to, these grey areas, one cannot get from point a to point b." '
(From exhibition handout- see notebook)
Suh's exhibition really resonated with me. The intricate details of the rooms, although incredibly personal to Suh himself and reflective of his own life, crystallise into something familiar for everyone. The fire extinguisher, the light switch, the door handle, all show an overlooked aspect to everyday interiors that he's managed to display in an appealing and tactile manner. These items take a new light into something that pushes them beyond their everyday use. This feeling of familiarity manifests itself as you walk through the piece into a new found appreciation of these objects and the effects our interior spaces have on us. The translucent weave of the fabric imposes a fragility on the space, which contrasts how buildings are usually made. We imagine rooms as hard, sturdy, protective structures that withstand time. The delicacy of his piece is reflective of the sense of nostalgia we feel when imagining old spaces, they are simply parts of our memory, they are no longer tangible to us.
(From exhibition handout- see notebook)
Suh's exhibition really resonated with me. The intricate details of the rooms, although incredibly personal to Suh himself and reflective of his own life, crystallise into something familiar for everyone. The fire extinguisher, the light switch, the door handle, all show an overlooked aspect to everyday interiors that he's managed to display in an appealing and tactile manner. These items take a new light into something that pushes them beyond their everyday use. This feeling of familiarity manifests itself as you walk through the piece into a new found appreciation of these objects and the effects our interior spaces have on us. The translucent weave of the fabric imposes a fragility on the space, which contrasts how buildings are usually made. We imagine rooms as hard, sturdy, protective structures that withstand time. The delicacy of his piece is reflective of the sense of nostalgia we feel when imagining old spaces, they are simply parts of our memory, they are no longer tangible to us.
Rachel whiteread
'Rachel Whiteread's approach to sculpture is predicated on the translation of negative space into solid form. Casting from everyday objects, or form spaces around or within furniture and architecture, she uses materials such as rubber, dental plaster and resin to record everyday nuance. In recent large-scale works, the empty interiors of wooden garden sheds were rendered in concrete and steel, recalling the earlier architectural works Ghost (1990), House (1993), and the imposing concrete sculpture Boathouse (2010), installed on the water's edge in the remote Nordic landscape of Roykenviken'
http://www.gagosian.com/artists/rachel-whiteread
'...Whiteread typically uses industrial materials such as plaster, resin and rubber to cast the negative space surrounding or within an object - the murky darkness beneath a bed frame, the void within a humble cardboard box, the space in and around a myriad collection of books. The resulting sculptures retain the texture and shape of the original objects, yet are eerie ghosts of their former selves.'
http://www.luhringaugustine.com/artists/rachel-whiteread/bio
Ultimately, I really love the end products. Her mix of mediums is interesting and eye catching, the opposing textures set each other off and add contrast to the pieces. I love the architectural edge, and am particularly interested in her smaller pieces. I like the way you want to touch and move them, this has given me some ideas for development within my own work. I'm also really interested in her drawings. It gives me ideas for a wider scope to my work.
http://www.gagosian.com/artists/rachel-whiteread
'...Whiteread typically uses industrial materials such as plaster, resin and rubber to cast the negative space surrounding or within an object - the murky darkness beneath a bed frame, the void within a humble cardboard box, the space in and around a myriad collection of books. The resulting sculptures retain the texture and shape of the original objects, yet are eerie ghosts of their former selves.'
http://www.luhringaugustine.com/artists/rachel-whiteread/bio
Ultimately, I really love the end products. Her mix of mediums is interesting and eye catching, the opposing textures set each other off and add contrast to the pieces. I love the architectural edge, and am particularly interested in her smaller pieces. I like the way you want to touch and move them, this has given me some ideas for development within my own work. I'm also really interested in her drawings. It gives me ideas for a wider scope to my work.
serra @ gagosian- london
He explored how an art work might relate intimately to a specific setting; how it might take up a physical as well as a visual relationship to a viewer; and how it might create spaces (or environments) in which a viewer can experience universal qualities of weight, gravity, agility, and even a kind of meditative repose.
http://www.theartstory.org/artist-serra-richard.htm
As always with Serra, an amazing exhibition. Makes me want to push my work into even more of an instillation area. I spoke to one of the invigilators at Gagosian and they told me they had to remove all the walls of the gallery and then build it back up around the sculptures to get them in. His work continuous to impress me and is a source of endless inspiration. Apart from highlighting the sheer beauty of his materials, Serra creates a playful intimate space which the viewer can experience. And it really is an experience, you are transported in a childlike manner to an almost fantasy world - it feels so unnatural to be walking around a maze of metal, as if you were a miniature person walking through a pipe. I don't mean to say that his work is childlike or naive in anyway, but it's impossible to walk through his work without feeling a strange reminiscent nostalgia, or some sort of escapism.
http://www.theartstory.org/artist-serra-richard.htm
As always with Serra, an amazing exhibition. Makes me want to push my work into even more of an instillation area. I spoke to one of the invigilators at Gagosian and they told me they had to remove all the walls of the gallery and then build it back up around the sculptures to get them in. His work continuous to impress me and is a source of endless inspiration. Apart from highlighting the sheer beauty of his materials, Serra creates a playful intimate space which the viewer can experience. And it really is an experience, you are transported in a childlike manner to an almost fantasy world - it feels so unnatural to be walking around a maze of metal, as if you were a miniature person walking through a pipe. I don't mean to say that his work is childlike or naive in anyway, but it's impossible to walk through his work without feeling a strange reminiscent nostalgia, or some sort of escapism.
fernanda gomes @ alison jacques gallery - LONDON
(See exhibition handout in notebook)
Overall I wasn't taken aback by this exhibition, but it was still enjoyable to view. The work of the artist is interesting and would have really related to my previous work. I felt that actually the curation of the exhibition wasn't great. Because all the pieces follow a similar theme, I found myself loosing interest even though it was only a small selection of works. This further solidifies my ideas to create something that will contrast my concrete pieces, I need to think more about how the viewer will move through my work and how I can stop them from 'desensitising' from the concrete on display.
Overall I wasn't taken aback by this exhibition, but it was still enjoyable to view. The work of the artist is interesting and would have really related to my previous work. I felt that actually the curation of the exhibition wasn't great. Because all the pieces follow a similar theme, I found myself loosing interest even though it was only a small selection of works. This further solidifies my ideas to create something that will contrast my concrete pieces, I need to think more about how the viewer will move through my work and how I can stop them from 'desensitising' from the concrete on display.
ART OF OUR TIME VOL 1
'...March 1966, when I entered the Tibor de Nagy Gallery and saw some bricks on the floor: eight near, low-lying arrangements of them. Construction in progress, I thought, and I turned to leave. Then another thought halted me: What if it’s art? Scarcely daring to hope for anything so wonderful (I may have held my breath), I asked a person in the gallery and was assured that, yes, this was a show of sculpture by Carl Andre. I was ecstatic. I pursued the bricks with a feeling of triumph.
Why?
I could not have explained at the time. It seems to me now that my response to Andre’s bricks, like the appearance of the work itself, had been long and well prepared, partaking in one of those movements of Zeitgeist when unruly threads of history are suddenly, tightly knotted. What elated then is the illumination, in a flash, of much that has been inchoate and strange in the world and, most of all, in one’s own sensibility. An instinct for the radical, a hunger for irreducible fact, a discuss with cultural piety, an aesthetic alertness to the commonplace - all these predispositions were galvanised for me, in a form that embodied and extended them. At the root of such an epiphany is the youthful need to be acknowledged, to know that one is not utterly negligible or crazy; and here was an art (was it art?) which existed in relation to me and which, in a sense, I created.
The main art-historical precedent for Andre’s bricks, I was immediately aware, had been Duchamp, with his readymades and his theory that the art work is a collaboration of artist and viewer. But the difference is enormous - the difference between the idea of something and the thing itself. Duchamp’s readymades gestured. The brick works were. With them at my feet as I walked around the gallery, accumulating views, I felt my awkward self-conscious, physical and psychological, being valorised, being made the focus and even the point of an experience. I had had intimations of this from artist other than Duchamp, mainly Johns and Warhol. By contrast, though, John’s moody emblems seemed ‘too personal’ and Warhol’s iconisations of mass culture ‘too social’. Here, at last, was the purely and cleanly existing heart of the matter.’
- Peter Schjeldahl
Schjeldahl, Peter. Art Of Our Time. 1st ed. London: Lund Humphries, 1985. Print.
Why?
I could not have explained at the time. It seems to me now that my response to Andre’s bricks, like the appearance of the work itself, had been long and well prepared, partaking in one of those movements of Zeitgeist when unruly threads of history are suddenly, tightly knotted. What elated then is the illumination, in a flash, of much that has been inchoate and strange in the world and, most of all, in one’s own sensibility. An instinct for the radical, a hunger for irreducible fact, a discuss with cultural piety, an aesthetic alertness to the commonplace - all these predispositions were galvanised for me, in a form that embodied and extended them. At the root of such an epiphany is the youthful need to be acknowledged, to know that one is not utterly negligible or crazy; and here was an art (was it art?) which existed in relation to me and which, in a sense, I created.
The main art-historical precedent for Andre’s bricks, I was immediately aware, had been Duchamp, with his readymades and his theory that the art work is a collaboration of artist and viewer. But the difference is enormous - the difference between the idea of something and the thing itself. Duchamp’s readymades gestured. The brick works were. With them at my feet as I walked around the gallery, accumulating views, I felt my awkward self-conscious, physical and psychological, being valorised, being made the focus and even the point of an experience. I had had intimations of this from artist other than Duchamp, mainly Johns and Warhol. By contrast, though, John’s moody emblems seemed ‘too personal’ and Warhol’s iconisations of mass culture ‘too social’. Here, at last, was the purely and cleanly existing heart of the matter.’
- Peter Schjeldahl
Schjeldahl, Peter. Art Of Our Time. 1st ed. London: Lund Humphries, 1985. Print.
Carl andre
Andre is a sculptor who neither carves into substances, nor models forms. His work involves the positioning of raw materials - such as bricks, blocks, ingots, or plates. He uses no fixatives to hold them in place. Andre has suggested that his procedure for building up a sculpture from small, regularly-shaped units is based on "the principle of masonry construction" - like stacking up bricks to build a wall.
Andre claims that his sculpture is an exploration of the properties of matter, and for this reason he has called himself a "matterist." Some people have seen his art as "concept based," as though each piece is merely the realization of an idea. But for Andre, this is mistaken: the characteristics of every unit of material he selects, and the arrangement and position of the sculpture in its environment, forms the substance of his art.
http://www.theartstory.org/artist-andre-carl.htm
I really enjoy Carl Andre's work, and his approach to his practice. The simple construction, and aesthetic of his pieces really inspire me. Ironically I actually prefer photographs of his work over ones that I have seen in real life. I think this probably has something to do with the floor placement of his work, I feel, personally, I cannot fully appreciate the work as I can never really get my face that close to it. I love being able to really get up close to the raw materials, and feel this is somewhat lost with a floor placement. None the less, his work continues to inspire me and I find his use of materials very relatable.
Andre claims that his sculpture is an exploration of the properties of matter, and for this reason he has called himself a "matterist." Some people have seen his art as "concept based," as though each piece is merely the realization of an idea. But for Andre, this is mistaken: the characteristics of every unit of material he selects, and the arrangement and position of the sculpture in its environment, forms the substance of his art.
http://www.theartstory.org/artist-andre-carl.htm
I really enjoy Carl Andre's work, and his approach to his practice. The simple construction, and aesthetic of his pieces really inspire me. Ironically I actually prefer photographs of his work over ones that I have seen in real life. I think this probably has something to do with the floor placement of his work, I feel, personally, I cannot fully appreciate the work as I can never really get my face that close to it. I love being able to really get up close to the raw materials, and feel this is somewhat lost with a floor placement. None the less, his work continues to inspire me and I find his use of materials very relatable.
ERNEST NETO
‘In his highly ambitious work of the past few years, Neto has expanded his structures to the point where they have begun to fill entire spaces, resulting in room-like environments that the viewer can enter and walk around inside. Because he increasingly favours fleshy colours for these tent-based sculptures, the sensation of passing through a layer of skin to enter a fleshy organism is acute. Even more startling is the feeling one has of being completely separated from the outside world once inside the structures. Most viewers have a sensation of being within a womb-like environment, where movement through the space suggests the passage from one body cavity to another. The effect of movement within this environment causes one to slow down and move more carefully, for fear of producing some rupture in the surrounding skin. Not surprisingly the cumulative effect of these expanded structures is an almost primordial elation in the viewer, who becomes temporarily completely enveloped by a membrane that is also an environment, as well as a heightened sensitivity to the bridge between physical touch and the body’s sense of location.
...
As our ability to affect the boarders of this world increases in direct proportion to our tactile pleasure, we become aware of our responsibility for maintaining an awareness and equilibrium between ourselves and everything we touch or that touches us. By inviting us into a world in which the ramifications of our every movement on the environment seem to be magnified, Neto prompts us to consider, as if for the first time, the outcome of our actions on the world which we occupy on an everyday basis. '
(exhibition handbook)
...
As our ability to affect the boarders of this world increases in direct proportion to our tactile pleasure, we become aware of our responsibility for maintaining an awareness and equilibrium between ourselves and everything we touch or that touches us. By inviting us into a world in which the ramifications of our every movement on the environment seem to be magnified, Neto prompts us to consider, as if for the first time, the outcome of our actions on the world which we occupy on an everyday basis. '
(exhibition handbook)
Robert irwin
His site-responsive works aim to refocus the habituated eye, posing questions rather than providing answers and encouraging the viewer to be made aware, afresh, of the visual field around them. Irwin has said about his art that he tries to ‘open up things’ and ‘just allow them to happen’, but also that ‘the pure subject of art is human perception’: a conditional activity determined by context.
A leading exponent of the ‘Light and Space’ movement, Irwin’s installations employ light, string and scrim to create subtle alterations in physical space. Architectural in scale, his works emphasise and expose particular spatial and perceptual experiences, for example by painting walls a particular colour; suspending panels to create a focused space beneath (Pure Space, 1990), or using taut panels of material scrim to change and intervene in specific architectural details (Square the Room, 2007). Panels of scrim stretched on wooden frames are also used to create sequential walls or chambers, whose colour is manipulated and harnessed to potent effect, using coloured gels over fluorescent lights. In this way, a physically perceptual passage for the viewer is created through works that, instead of emphasising their presence, recede through their light translucency and act like brackets for our phenomenological experience.
http://whitecube.com/artists/robert_irwin/
A leading exponent of the ‘Light and Space’ movement, Irwin’s installations employ light, string and scrim to create subtle alterations in physical space. Architectural in scale, his works emphasise and expose particular spatial and perceptual experiences, for example by painting walls a particular colour; suspending panels to create a focused space beneath (Pure Space, 1990), or using taut panels of material scrim to change and intervene in specific architectural details (Square the Room, 2007). Panels of scrim stretched on wooden frames are also used to create sequential walls or chambers, whose colour is manipulated and harnessed to potent effect, using coloured gels over fluorescent lights. In this way, a physically perceptual passage for the viewer is created through works that, instead of emphasising their presence, recede through their light translucency and act like brackets for our phenomenological experience.
http://whitecube.com/artists/robert_irwin/
hayward gallery light show
The artists in Light Show use that most familiar yet intangible medium - artificial light - as the basis of their sculptures and installations. ... this exhibition provides an incisive survey of pioneering and rarely seen instillations made since the 1960s, including inventive and challenging works from recent years. Whether they make use of bespoke fixtures, off-the-shelf lighting or newly-developed technologies, the artists in this show have contributed to a profound experiment that continues to re-map the boundaries of contemporary sculpture while simultaneously provoking us to reflect on the qualities and limits of our own perception.
...They explore interests that range from how we experience and psychologically respond to illumination and colour to more conceptual and political concerns. Almost all their work, however, uses artificial light to create a sense of sculptural space that directly calls into play our individual perceptual responses. It invites us to scrutinise and, in some cases, to interact with, environments and projections in which we can unfold the complexity of our encounters with the myriad aspects of light.
Ralph Rugoff, Director, Hayward Gallery
For centuries light has been a subject of fascination for artists, from medieval altarpieces to impressionist painting to photography, literally 'writing with light'. The use of electrical light in art is, however, a more recent phenomenon, emerging in the twentieth century. Artists using artificial light employ it as a material in and of itself, compelled by its luminous and intangible qualities.
...
It is however the the widespread broadening of the category of sculpture around the 1960s - 'the transition from "objecthood" to environment' - that saw artists fully maximising light's potential both as a sculptural medium and for altering the viewer's perception of space. This shift was certainly related to the emphasis of much of 1960s artwork on vision 'as embedded within the body and inextricably bound up with a broader situating of the body within the physical environment', an encounter that art historian Alex Potts has since coined 'the phenomenological turn'.
...
SHAPING LIGHT:
...Artists have used different light sources and supports, each with distinctive aesthetic properties and spatial possibilities. The effect that light has on the surrounding gallery architecture becomes important, often forming a part of the artwork; some artworks actually take on the guise of built architecture. Overall, that the following artworks posses sculptural form is important - as 'objects' they still demand a sculptural encounter with the viewer, as something to be looked at, even if their forms exhibit varying degrees of solidarity and ephemerality.
PERCEIVING LIGHT:
...shifted the meaning of the artwork away from the object and toward the order of experience. ... the 1960s were 'concerned with eroding the traditional barricades set up between perceiver and perceived, between the object and the eye'. Light art, in particular the kind that foregrounds perceptual phenomena, had a crucial role to play here. Many of these artworks are immersive and environmental instillations that investigate how we perceive and negotiate the world around us. Many also depend depend upon established physiological principles in order to generate their effects.
...The light and space movement examined the relationship between materials and perception. ...demonstrated shared themes addressed through sculptural abstraction, and often involved experimentation with the reflections and refractions of light and new industrial materials.
...
The artist has referred to the 'sensate experience' of his works in replacing the viewers attention to the object with an awareness of the effects of light.
...
'...LED panels are sometimes designed and positioned in relation to existing architecture.'
Cliff Lauson
Lauson, Cliff. Light Show. 1st ed. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2014. Print.
I actually went to this exhibition when I was in sixth form, and I wish I could view it now instead with a new appreciation for the works. A lot of this text really correlates to what i've been trying to say/do with my work. The light, in this sense, creates a space for people where they feel they have been transported somewhere beyond the gallery walls. The creation of a sculptural space is incredibly effortless yet effective; and plays on the viewers perception. Although its a very 'public' instillation, the effects of the light resonate far deeper within the viewer, affecting their mood, emotions and heightening your awareness of yourself within the environment. Within my work next term I will attempt to completely immerse the viewer in this light, (through the corridor setting), and with the canvas make something that is far more tangible and tactile than the light by itself. The sentences referring to the architecture in this text are particularly relevant to me. I've always felt that textures and light come hand in hand, this is where my quest for light began. The concrete really solidifies itself as an industrial material when it's situated next to the LED lights; they compliment each other in ways I can't quiet put into words. The electrical, colorful and energetic light contrasts the solid, hard grayness of the concrete. One without the other in this piece doesn't quiet have the same effect, in my opinion. I believe if our studios were a vast grey industrial warehouse I wouldn't feel the same need to build a concrete wall next to the light, it's funny how my priorities have shifted from at first being focused on offsetting the concrete, to now how I can best compliment the light.
The most poignant sentence for me in this text, and probably the one I will refer to the most is:
'Perhaps less explicitly, artists have turned to light for its potential to have a bearing on mood and emotion, to create wonder and a sense of awe.'
...because ultimately, my work as always been incredibly focused on the aesthetic. I am not trying to make any political or contextual statements, I am simply trying to absorb the viewer into my work.
...They explore interests that range from how we experience and psychologically respond to illumination and colour to more conceptual and political concerns. Almost all their work, however, uses artificial light to create a sense of sculptural space that directly calls into play our individual perceptual responses. It invites us to scrutinise and, in some cases, to interact with, environments and projections in which we can unfold the complexity of our encounters with the myriad aspects of light.
Ralph Rugoff, Director, Hayward Gallery
For centuries light has been a subject of fascination for artists, from medieval altarpieces to impressionist painting to photography, literally 'writing with light'. The use of electrical light in art is, however, a more recent phenomenon, emerging in the twentieth century. Artists using artificial light employ it as a material in and of itself, compelled by its luminous and intangible qualities.
...
It is however the the widespread broadening of the category of sculpture around the 1960s - 'the transition from "objecthood" to environment' - that saw artists fully maximising light's potential both as a sculptural medium and for altering the viewer's perception of space. This shift was certainly related to the emphasis of much of 1960s artwork on vision 'as embedded within the body and inextricably bound up with a broader situating of the body within the physical environment', an encounter that art historian Alex Potts has since coined 'the phenomenological turn'.
...
SHAPING LIGHT:
...Artists have used different light sources and supports, each with distinctive aesthetic properties and spatial possibilities. The effect that light has on the surrounding gallery architecture becomes important, often forming a part of the artwork; some artworks actually take on the guise of built architecture. Overall, that the following artworks posses sculptural form is important - as 'objects' they still demand a sculptural encounter with the viewer, as something to be looked at, even if their forms exhibit varying degrees of solidarity and ephemerality.
PERCEIVING LIGHT:
...shifted the meaning of the artwork away from the object and toward the order of experience. ... the 1960s were 'concerned with eroding the traditional barricades set up between perceiver and perceived, between the object and the eye'. Light art, in particular the kind that foregrounds perceptual phenomena, had a crucial role to play here. Many of these artworks are immersive and environmental instillations that investigate how we perceive and negotiate the world around us. Many also depend depend upon established physiological principles in order to generate their effects.
...The light and space movement examined the relationship between materials and perception. ...demonstrated shared themes addressed through sculptural abstraction, and often involved experimentation with the reflections and refractions of light and new industrial materials.
...
The artist has referred to the 'sensate experience' of his works in replacing the viewers attention to the object with an awareness of the effects of light.
...
'...LED panels are sometimes designed and positioned in relation to existing architecture.'
Cliff Lauson
Lauson, Cliff. Light Show. 1st ed. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2014. Print.
I actually went to this exhibition when I was in sixth form, and I wish I could view it now instead with a new appreciation for the works. A lot of this text really correlates to what i've been trying to say/do with my work. The light, in this sense, creates a space for people where they feel they have been transported somewhere beyond the gallery walls. The creation of a sculptural space is incredibly effortless yet effective; and plays on the viewers perception. Although its a very 'public' instillation, the effects of the light resonate far deeper within the viewer, affecting their mood, emotions and heightening your awareness of yourself within the environment. Within my work next term I will attempt to completely immerse the viewer in this light, (through the corridor setting), and with the canvas make something that is far more tangible and tactile than the light by itself. The sentences referring to the architecture in this text are particularly relevant to me. I've always felt that textures and light come hand in hand, this is where my quest for light began. The concrete really solidifies itself as an industrial material when it's situated next to the LED lights; they compliment each other in ways I can't quiet put into words. The electrical, colorful and energetic light contrasts the solid, hard grayness of the concrete. One without the other in this piece doesn't quiet have the same effect, in my opinion. I believe if our studios were a vast grey industrial warehouse I wouldn't feel the same need to build a concrete wall next to the light, it's funny how my priorities have shifted from at first being focused on offsetting the concrete, to now how I can best compliment the light.
The most poignant sentence for me in this text, and probably the one I will refer to the most is:
'Perhaps less explicitly, artists have turned to light for its potential to have a bearing on mood and emotion, to create wonder and a sense of awe.'
...because ultimately, my work as always been incredibly focused on the aesthetic. I am not trying to make any political or contextual statements, I am simply trying to absorb the viewer into my work.
keith sonnier
Keith Sonnier was part of a group of artists who challenged preconceived notions of sculpture in the late 1960s by experimenting with industrial and ephemeral materials.. In Sonnier’s case, materials ranged from latex and satin, to found objects, transmitters and video.
Frustrated by the standardized forms of incandescent light, he started experimenting with neon. Using copper tubing as a template, Sonnier began sketching lines, arches and curves ultimately realized in glass tubing enclosed neon. The linear quality of neon allowed Sonnier to draw in space with light and color while colored light interacted with the surrounding architecture.
http://www.keithsonnier.net/biography.html
I particularly like his mix of textures. Using light to complement industrial textures and visa versa. His work is incredibly simple yet effective. Unlike the work I'm trying to do, he uses one line of neon light, almost like drawing. This is an interesting approach to light. I have been using mine to create a sense of atmosphere or mood, whereas he uses his to literally draw his sculptures. Its got be thinking of the arrangement of my LED strip lights. I've noticed that the thinner the canvas, the more obvious the direction of the lights are behind - perhaps I want the light arrangement to be seen..,
Frustrated by the standardized forms of incandescent light, he started experimenting with neon. Using copper tubing as a template, Sonnier began sketching lines, arches and curves ultimately realized in glass tubing enclosed neon. The linear quality of neon allowed Sonnier to draw in space with light and color while colored light interacted with the surrounding architecture.
http://www.keithsonnier.net/biography.html
I particularly like his mix of textures. Using light to complement industrial textures and visa versa. His work is incredibly simple yet effective. Unlike the work I'm trying to do, he uses one line of neon light, almost like drawing. This is an interesting approach to light. I have been using mine to create a sense of atmosphere or mood, whereas he uses his to literally draw his sculptures. Its got be thinking of the arrangement of my LED strip lights. I've noticed that the thinner the canvas, the more obvious the direction of the lights are behind - perhaps I want the light arrangement to be seen..,
erika hock
I can't find any information on this artist online (at least none in english) but I really Love her work! It again proves to me how much I need to make my work more of a sculpture and less of a piece on the wall. These are really effective, and great at showing the materials, there textures, there strengths and weaknesses. I really wish I could view some of this work in the flesh.
dan flavin
Dan Flavin emphatically denied that his sculptural light installations had any kind of transcendent, symbolic, or sublime dimension, stating: "It is what it is and it ain't nothing else," and that his works are simply fluorescent light responding to a specific architectural setting. Despite Flavin's insistence on this, it is possible to view individual pieces in terms of implied narratives. Potential associations with the concept of light - from religious conversion to intellectual epiphanies - are rife in Flavin's work, whether or not such interpretations are encouraged by the artist himself.
Flavin's light "propositions," which he did not consider sculptures, are made up of standardized, commercially available materials, much like the readymades by Marcel Duchamp that Flavin admired. Further, the materials Flavin used are perishable, their limited lifecycles anything but timeless. In this way, the artist emphasized the ephemeral nature of his works, positioning his art outside the realm of connoisseurship, where art objects are valued as much for their material qualities as for their conceptual meaning.
The tendency to privilege pre-fabricated industrial materials and simple, geometric forms together with the emphasis placed on the physical space occupied by the artwork and the viewer's interaction with it aligns Flavin's work with that of other Minimalist artists. His emphasis on light and its effects, however, align him as strongly with Op art, whose practitioners explored variations in color and shape based on differences in light. But, in some regards, Flavin went much further than the Op art painters by taking the fundamental concepts of the style and translating them into sculpture that demonstrated in three dimensions what the paintings could only aspire to communicate. The optical effects painters achieved could only fool the eye by alluding to movement, whereas Flavin's light waves demonstrated how the two-dimensional illusionism was achieved - light was color, color was light, and the interaction of either created the illusion of dynamism as they played against, or in harmony with, one another and in their environment.
http://www.theartstory.org/artist-flavin-dan.htm
Flavin's light "propositions," which he did not consider sculptures, are made up of standardized, commercially available materials, much like the readymades by Marcel Duchamp that Flavin admired. Further, the materials Flavin used are perishable, their limited lifecycles anything but timeless. In this way, the artist emphasized the ephemeral nature of his works, positioning his art outside the realm of connoisseurship, where art objects are valued as much for their material qualities as for their conceptual meaning.
The tendency to privilege pre-fabricated industrial materials and simple, geometric forms together with the emphasis placed on the physical space occupied by the artwork and the viewer's interaction with it aligns Flavin's work with that of other Minimalist artists. His emphasis on light and its effects, however, align him as strongly with Op art, whose practitioners explored variations in color and shape based on differences in light. But, in some regards, Flavin went much further than the Op art painters by taking the fundamental concepts of the style and translating them into sculpture that demonstrated in three dimensions what the paintings could only aspire to communicate. The optical effects painters achieved could only fool the eye by alluding to movement, whereas Flavin's light waves demonstrated how the two-dimensional illusionism was achieved - light was color, color was light, and the interaction of either created the illusion of dynamism as they played against, or in harmony with, one another and in their environment.
http://www.theartstory.org/artist-flavin-dan.htm