Oct 22, 2011

Robert Irwin












I'm finally at Robert Irwin's "Way Out West" show at L&M Gallery in Venice. OK so he's one of my favorite artists and it's the last day and last hour…so what else is new? At least I'm here.

The show is classic Irwin genius—to get you to notice the process of seeing and more importantly to question what you see and how you see.

On first glance these are just colored fluorescent tubes artfully arranged with tape exactingly placed as vertical stripes on most tubes. Look a little closer though and it becomes difficult to discern what's tape from what's active light to what's reflection to what's shadow. If you go further and make the presentation 2D in your mind, you'll see a symphony of lines of varying widths and colors that gets more complex the closer you get. Fill your peripheral vision with the light and you swear you're looking at a glowing painting. It's music transformed into light, with rhythm and harmony, crescendo and diminuendo, softness and power.

I'm a colorist and this work is visual orgasm to me. Maybe even better…I can look at it more than once every three hours.

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