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The light in Southern California can be breathtaking, even inspiring.
And for a group of artists working in our region during the 1960s, it inspired a movement.
They would spend hours studying the way the light passed through the window and moved
around the room and try to capture something from that natural experience.
The artists in what became known as the light and space movement created art that looked
and felt different than anything that had come before it.? This was art that didn't
require a frame or even a wall to hang it on.
They took art into a new plane, a new dimension to do with perception and art at the end of
the day is all about perception.
Artists like Robert Irwin, James Turrell and Doug Wheeler created experiential art - works
that took over an entire room and used light to focus and heighten the viewers' awareness.
This work by Wheeler feels like your enveloped in a cloud.
They're asking the viewer to take some time and get a feeling for the space that they're
in and their engagement with the piece. They're walking
around it, inhabiting it if it's not an object, and it's really about a contemplative consideration
of your own surroundings.
The work of 13 light, space and surface artists is currently on view in all three of the Museum
of Contemporary Art San Diego's locations, making it in the largest exhibit the museum
has ever mounted.
Larry Bell's piece which is in the Jacobs Gallery is a wonderful demonstration of light
and space and surface.
Bell is one of the artists in the show who explores perception through the surface of
his sculptures.
And it's very confusing as you move through it and see other people move around itÉ.because
you're never quite sure whether you're seeing what's behind you or whether you're looking
through it.
The fact the ceiling is so high it allows the piece to stand in a kind of magical mystical
presence. It gives the piece a chance to have light from two different kinds of sources
and two different main directions and the white walls incorporate themselves into the
reflection of the piece. It's a fabulous place for this thing.
The exhibit is part of a larger initiative by the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Sixty
museums up and down the coast, are showing art from post-war Los Angeles. Davies says
MCASD's show is a significant part of that history.
The light, space, and surface movement is to me the most important native art movement
to come out of Southern California.