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Dan Flavin: Paula Cooper Gallery.


In this exhibition of white fluorescent light works by Dan Flavin Dan Flavin (April 1, 1933 Jamaica, New York – November 29, 1996 Riverhead, New York) was an American minimalist artist who is famous for creating sculptural objects and installations from commercially available fluorescent light fixtures. , placement wax 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 pitched roof
n.
A two-sided sloped roof having a gable at both ends. Also called gable 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 front 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 par·tic·u·lar·i·ty  
n. pl. par·tic·u·lar·i·ties
1. The quality or state of being particular rather than general.

2.
 of each piece--nor to say the excruciating exactness with which it had been placed? Flavin flavin: see coenzyme.
flavin

Any of a class of organic compounds, pale yellow biological pigments that fluoresce green. They occur in compounds essential to life as coenzymes in metabolism.
 seems to have been preoccupied with what Rudolf Otto Rudolf Otto (September 25 1869–6 March 1937) was an eminent German Lutheran theologian and scholar of comparative religion. Life
Born in Peine near Hanover, Otto attended the Gymnasium Andreanum in Hildesheim and studied at the universities of Erlangen and
 called the numinous nu·mi·nous  
adj.
1. Of or relating to a numen; supernatural.

2. Filled with or characterized by a sense of a supernatural presence: a numinous place.

3.
, 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 robe 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 robes (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 vibrating,
v using quivering hand motions made across the client's body for therapeutic purposes.
 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 tire infinity within its finitude fin·i·tude  
n.
The quality or condition of being finite.

Noun 1. finitude - the quality of being finite
boundedness, finiteness
? Or was the low-key magnificence in fact ironic decoration and Conceptual pretense? The questions remain.
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Title Annotation:New York
Author:Kuspit, Donald
Publication:Artforum International
Date:Nov 1, 2003
Words:461
Previous Article:Lyle Ashton Harris: CRG Gallery.(New York)
Next Article:Helmut Federle: Peter Blum.(New York)
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