Dan Flavin at David Zwirmer Gallery

I recently took a trip to the David Zwirmer Gallery in Chelsea and saw the work of Dan Flavin. I remembered seeing his work from freshman year in my Seminar in Contemporary Art class and finding his work to be simple, yet exciting and different. The whole concept of using light as art was a really fascinating idea with almost limitless possibilities. But Flavin often keeps his work simple and I appreciate that fact. It seems that in this case that a little goes a long way.

In the first few rooms that you walk into, Flavin only places a few light bulbs stacked in the corner. The first room has lights in the colors of yellow and red, the second is lit with red and blue and the third room is lit with green and red. As I headed towards the other side of the gallery, there was a room with windows in the ceiling letting sunlight in, but pure white fluorescent bulbs also illuminated it. I was curious why Flavin chose this room to set up the pure white lights because it didn’t have much of an effect against the daylight coming through. Perhaps that was his plan all along.

When I went into the next room I found blue and red lights lined up along the wall with some jutting out like prongs off of them. There were three set up in a row and one on an adjacent wall. The prongs sticking out were offset at different heights. Something about it made me want to be able to fly and just travel through those outward sticking prongs like a football through a field goal post.

My favorite thing in the installation was a bright blue railing of fluorescent bulbs that completely divided a room in half. When I first saw it from a distance I thought the railing was next to a dropped lower level and was preventing people from going down, but then I realized the light from the railing was creating this effect. The light shining on one side was illuminating the side of the room where observers could stand, but the other side was dark, giving it the illusion that the ground was actually lower.

Flavin’s work has a very interesting way of creating a special atmosphere. The fluorescent lights transform each room into its own special dimension of color. I definitely sensed a lot of energy when first stepping into the installation and it seemed to change with each room. It was especially obvious how unique each set of lights made a room when you would stand in one room and look at the glow created by the other adjoining rooms. I feel very fortunate to have gotten to see such a unique art form from such a legendary artist.