Dan Flavin: coloured fluorescent light @ David Zwirner
Dan Flavin’s momentous coloured fluorescent light exhibition at David Zwirner recreates his celebrated 1976 exhibitions at Leo Castelli Gallery in New York and Galerie Heiner Friedrich in Cologne. Between 1963 and his death in 1996, Flavin produced a prolific and prodigious body of work that used fluorescent lamps to create ‘situations’ of light and colour.
“I do not like the term ‘environment’ associated with my proposal... I intend rapid comprehensions—get in and get out situations. I think that one has explicit moments with such particular light-space.”
Installation View, Dan Flavin: coloured fluorescent lights, David Zwirner, London, 2023. Courtesy David Zwirner.
Spread across two floors and four rooms, Flavin’s ‘situations’ create an immersive site-specific technicolour environment. The fluorescent lights emanating from fixtures positioned against the walls produce various effects that flood one’s vision with subtle hues of colour. These colours diffuse together and expand throughout the space, bouncing off of the walls, floor, ceiling, and those inside occupying the space.
Strikingly, Flavin’s sculptural abstractions form precise colour geometry by playing with the visual properties of light and specific colour combinations. These combinations can be found in various forms and positioned in eclectic degrees, such as vertical, horizontal, or a combination of both. The colours, which include red, pink, blue, green, yellows and four shades of white, are the factory's default pigments and allude to Flavin’s choice of industrial material. The results are a mesmerising and dynamic interaction with the audience when the mixing of coloured light transpires in front of your eyes. The haze of pigmentation vividly captures the moment audience members enter the room: senses are assaulted and engulfed in waves of phosphorescent light.
The decision to recreate Flavin’s 1976 New York and Cologne exhibitions demonstrates how pivotal the spectacles were in his career. At the time, he pushed the possibilities of fluorescent lighting. By radically limiting his materials to commercially available, standard sizes and colours, Flavin repurposes this ordinary material and inserts it into the contemporary art world.
Moreover, Flavin’s prolific series conveys his ongoing interest in colour in conversation with architectural space and the variance of forms and repetition to create evocative ‘situations.’ His earlier Icons series combined electric lights with painted square-fronted constructions. Icons was the start of Flavin exploring the use of light in a sculptural sense; it wasn’t until 1963, when he eliminated canvas and moved towards commercially available fluorescent light tubes, that secured his illustrious legacy. The gallery exhibits Flavin's innovativeness and how he established and redefined spaces through his light sculptures and installations.
Dan Flavin, Preparatory Drawing for Heiner Friedrich, Cologne, 1976. Courtesy David Zwirner.
In response to Abstract Expressionism and its overtly gestural, emotional, and spontaneous nature, Flavin's minimalist practice removes the artist's hand from the creative process by using commercially available, industrially-made materials. His minimalistic reaction counteracts the dominant artistic style popular at the time. Minimalism was a relatively emergent genre spearheaded by influential artists such as Frank Stella in the 1960s. This style epitomises simplistic forms and reductionist tendencies of modern art. Flavin's work progressively evolved to more complex figurations and arrangements of fluorescent lights with ambitious room-size environments and architecture.
In contrast to durable Minimalist mediums, Flavin’s fluorescent light bulbs would not only eventually burn out, but his choice of transitory light as a subject demonstrates his divergence from the Minimalist artistic norms. Evidently, Dan Flavin’s ‘situations’ are avant-garde, creating an elaborate synthesis of mood lighting and optical effects.
Installation View, Dan Flavin: coloured fluorescent lights, David Zwirner, London, 2023. Courtesy David Zwirner.
Flavin’s oeuvre continues to muse on aesthetic dynamics in relation to light and space. The audience is physically affected by his fluorescent installations by stepping into its mystical aura. They encompass our senses and are entirely immersive, brutally modern and absolutely captivating.
A concurrent exhibition, Dan Flavin: Kornblee Gallery 1967, will be on view at David Zwirner’s 34 East 69th Street location in New York.
Dan Flavin: coloured fluorescent light is on view at David Zwirner, London, until February 18, 2023.
Bibliography:
David Zwirner. “ Dan Flavin: coloured fluorescent light.” Accessed February 5, 2023.
Tate Modern. “Dan Flavin: 1933–1996.” Accessed February 8, 2023.
Kendra Lee
Co-Review Editor, MADE IN BED
