Perhaps because despite the fact that it says Spring on the calendar, it’s really still winter, with record low temperatures predicted to last til at least mid April. (Anyone want to bet on Snow in June?) I’d left it until now to see the Light Show at the Hayward Gallery. I’d essentially waited til the right moment to banish the Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) and go in for a dose of Enlightening and Chromatic saturation. Bit like visiting a tanning salon for the soul or…
One of the standout works for me at his show, was that of Doug Wheeler. A rare opportunity to see one the limminal works of this much appreciated artist. The last time I’d seen a work of his was at the Smithsonian in Washington D.c. Where the attendant recommended walking out in to the field of red chromatic saturation with your arm out. There, there was a confusing with plane, extension , perspective and depth. On show at the Hayward as a subtler cooler work. Yet much of the same immersive experience was at hand. You enter a white cube – or room , in which a clear resin square gently radiates a soft blight blue light. Lit from within, the light spreads from the edge to a foot and a half into the large square. while reflected light casts a griadated halo of about a meter around it. the bottom sides and ceiling are curved, to control the exact effect.
To enter the full effect, rather than merely grasping its beauty. I would recommend staying for as near to 20 mins as possible. Though You could enter into a meditative spirit and stay much longer.
As the eye pick up ever more detail in the soft light, the reflected light from the room suggests itself in the resin square. So that it feels as if a smaller volumetric space exists connected by that frame. The extended viewing, means that you observe the phenomena of the eye picking up as much light as possible and the brain making sense of this information. So that there is a sort of wave-like effect going on. The illuminated edges of the square gently flicker between the spatial plane they are read in and in intensity. Even floating in a partial after-burn. The low intensity of the light, extends itself, further in space and through the material of the square. So that there is a duration aspect which informs what we talk away from the work. In that sense it has a zen aspect. All this informs the stage area that has arisen in the square, being aware that this produced by such a finite and delicate amount of light. The space informs to sensitized. You have to be there, in the same way that sunbathing in the summer sun, eyes closed, you attempted to absorb everything, to the point of emptying out. You stay past what might be good for you, with certain abandon. You stay like a white limestone baking til it turns to a golden-yellow blush of an oven cooked Ricotta cheese cake. Aware that for all efforts, it will be so difficult to re-enter this moment once leaving, at the limit of the faculties to record and recall, to register and retain in some kind of personal annotation. The limit of the body to be saturated, and recall, in say muscular memory. It’s a good question, how do we hold on to memories and those things that have had good affect on us.how do we keep them to the fore. They are real things. And we prized them more than a good many trivial things that have concrete aspects.
James Turrell – Maker of ‘Perceptual enviroments’
Another attract installation. that echos architectural concerns. It is a sort of minimalist excursion, playing with expectations. so that the manner that it bucks them can be described as musical in a formalist sense. Through entering a darken corridor, we are bathed by a bright read stage, framed within it a band of blue light, highlighting the dimension the space. A red beam of light on the right hand side, cuts across diagonally to the left hand side of the rectangle. Then then back wall extends far to the right out of sight, perhaps the length of the room space we are now already looking at. The very left hand corner is highlit by a cold band of blue from top to bottom of that edge of the room. (a triangle is formed). While the right hand side is informed by the open space and extra light source of having that extra room. THere is more light, but also the space through which the light works in add to the effect of how we perceive that space. It is loose and warmer, whereas in the left corner it feels tighter. We are aware that it is the spatial, which influence the intensity of the light and in turn how we read the space and take an emotional que. While the open extending space, that goes on into the unseen, give a release from all that containment, as well as our own programmatic expectations. its almost like a flood of space.
It’s particularly delicious, once having appreciated all this, to stand at the left hand of the rectangle, and try and see more of this hidden room, just out of reach, this secret space promising another, one more progression. It like a smile beyond the veil. Somehow so promesing, so plentiful so pregnant a corner. So much confabulate in that corner, some how its like crossing a finnishing line, and the being provided with more victories to cross though an an instant. one wonders if this is what it’s like inside a mathematicians head.
My friend Pia burst out into stitches, over the near impossibility of holding herself back from walking into the staged room and being told off in a robust voice by the attendant.
Cerith Wyn Evans
fulfilling as sort of re imagine or re-purposing of the industrial.
