Dan Flavin

In this exhibition of white fluorescent light works by Dan Flavin, placement was everything. However singular some of the arrangements appeared, the fluorescent tubes’ relationships to one another and to the spaces in which they were installed gave the impression that there were no individual pieces on view. One of the galleries is enormous, with a pitched roof of wooden beams; the other is smaller (if not exactly intimate), with a high glass door whose opaque square panes form a grid. Flavin’s works punctuated these spaces, disturbing neither the grandeur of the one nor the concentration of the other. There was an air of discretion and care to the installation, as though each sculpture, illuminated from within (sometimes in contrasting tones of white), were a shrine.

Did the installation as a whole create an aura of transcendence, or did one get bogged down in the exquisite particularity of each piece—not to say the excruciating exactness with which it had been placed? Flavin seems to have been preoccupied with what Rudolf Otto called the numinous, but perhaps he simply made what Judd called specific objects—items all too specific and objective. The ambiguity intrigues.

Moving clockwise around the large space, one first encountered a single diagonal tube in the left wall’s left corner. More or less centered on the back wall, also in glorious isolation, was a group of four vertical tubes, one long, then two short, then one long. On the right wall were five tubes (four short, one long in between) pitched at forty-five degrees, as though the angle could subvert all the repetition. Finally, at the edge of the room’s wide entryway—Flavin was acutely conscious of walls and open spaces—was an arrangement of two long, “warm” tubes next to two short “daylight” ones. Here, then, were four long walls and four small works that radiated into space. The site became enchanting, even as the works, looked at closely, dwindled into simple abstract constructions, minor monuments to technology.

The smaller room contained only one piece—an eye-level corner construction that “interacted” with the door not far from it. One more work (a long, “warm” white tube between two long, “cool” white tubes) marked the outside of the passageway. It was impossible to be unaware of the whiteness of the walls and the expanse of the space, both of which pulsed with light. All in all, the installation was stunning; a fit homage to a Minimalist master who carried “vibrating sensation” to a peculiarly static climax. Did the space achieve a kind of interior sublime in which each work functioned as a repoussoir, throwing the space into relief, as it were, suggesting the infinity within its finitude? Or was the low-key magnificence in fact ironic decoration and Conceptual pretense? The questions remain.

—Donald Kuspit