Galerie Perrotin is currently radiating with Dan Flavin’s fluorescent light sculptures. An Installation features eight sculptural works from the years 1963–89 and three schematic drawings. 1963 was a seminal year for Flavin, as he removed all other elements from his practice to work solely with commercially available fluorescent lights. With clarity and simplicity, his constructed arrangements explore the painterly possibilities of color and light while engaging with the architectural space.
White Around A Corner is a significant corner piece which consists of a single fluorescent tube placed in the intersection of the walls, removing the darkness and drawing critical attention to a conventionally unused space.
Dan Flavin, ‘monument’ for V. Tatlin (1967)
Also included in the exhibition is ‘monument’ for V. Tatlin, part of a series dedicated to Vladimir Tatlin, a leading figure in the Russian Constructivist movement. Tatlin’s greatest work was his unrealized project, the Monument to the Third Reich, a colossal tilted iron tower, for which Flavin’s “monuments†are named.
Dan Flavin, untitled (to Ksenija) (1985)
Each piece survives only as long as the light system functions, lending a certain poetic temporality to the work. Flavin’s practice confuses conventional classifications of formalist analysis as it contains painterly, sculptural, and readymade qualities imbued with deep symbolic potential.
– A. Wilkinson
Read More :
Exhibition Page [Galerie Perrotin]
National Gallery of Art [Dan Flavin: Retrospective]
