CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 8/1/2015

Dan Flavin: Series and Progressions

In David Zwirner Books and Steidl's exceptional new release Anne Rorimer writes, "Consonant with works by LeWitt, Bochner, Asher and Buren, Flavin's installations meet Conceptualism's requisite goal of seeking to mend the physical, material and ideational gap between art and actuality. By virtue of their literal luminosity, they succeed in immersing viewers in a work's own, self-reflected radiance without having to forfeit their future portability. Fluorescent lamps may not only be turned on and off, but, more important, may be transferred from one exhibition space to another without losing their a priori, formal configuration. Objects by Flavin, such as those initially gathered together at the Heiner Friedrich gallery in 1968, on the one hand, retain their Minimal, self-reflexive, material/formal self-sufficiency either as an assembled group of individual works or as a single work like the 'barriers' that take over a room. On the other hand, his works bind with existing reality as if creating a pact with the here and now through color and light. Flavin's installations thus presage the Conceptual quest to vanquish illusion, including the illusion of art's independence from contextual confines. They accomplish such a mission by means of their site-dependent, site-responsive, site-interactive, site-adaptive nature—all in all, made possible by his oeuvre's combined site-illuminating and self-illuminating capacity." Featured image is "Untitled (for John Heartfield) 3A" (1990).