Panta Rhei Meanders Through Space

It is quite logical that a waterworks/energy company, having its anniversary, would arrange an art exhibition, concentrating on light as a material and water and time as themes. And that's what RheinEnergie did. The result is exhibition Panta rhei (29.4.–25.9.2022), where time, water and light intermingle effortlessly in the beautiful old waterworks building. 

Molitor & Kuzmin underground

There were two projection artworks, quite different visually, both dealing with rippling water. In François Schwamborn’s Nervous Water we see a water surface, reflecting greenery around it, in a very slow motion. It’s hard to tell if the material is filmed, painted of computer generated, since the slowness of it sheds the characteristics of rippling water and renders the material beautifully impressionist. 

Claude Monet would have loved this

Hartung & Trenz had a another piece called Panta rhei in Brixen Light Art Festival last spring, so they're familiar with the theme. Will get back to that festival later. The artist duo use projected texts regularly in their work, and Momentum is no exception. The words “kinetai kai pei ta panta” (another version of "everything moves") are projected to the wall, building up a meandering river of words. I did catch some other words as well, like “lager”, but that might have been just a premonition, see "Touristy Tips" at the end. The ripple here was caused by reflecting water pools and dropping water, but also by the viewers walking past the projectors. Interactivity!

Words rippling

Bastian Hoffmann’s two minimalistic water sculptures (both called Untitled) were the most concrete handling of water in the exhibition. A stable water jet, seemingly defying gravity and disturbance, disappeared in a hole, forming a glass-like arch. The simplicity and serenity of the artworks made a great impression to me. There really wasn’t anything to show off, just the idea. For once, I didn’t touch the artwork. But I really, really wanted to. 

Eero Saarinen would have loved this

Mischa Kuball, on the other hand, dealt with water in a more figurative way, quite unlike his other works I've seen. In Objects, artefacts and other damages abandoned historical and contemporary objects float in a long, video-projected river, while it turns all murky. The murkiness starts from a coffee box, which I, as an avid coffee drinker, take a little offense of. 

Yes, blame the coffee drinkers

Mirrors and infinity rooms are a big trend in light art at the moment. Huge trend. Remembering LUX: New Wave of Contemporary Art with its several reflections-based ideas I wondered if there’s still something new to it. Surprisingly, Jacqueline Hen’s super simple infinity grid Light High went back to basics, and it was quite refreshing in my simple mind. Even the slight ripple in lights in the start and end of the loop felt a tad unnecessary show-off.

Know your coordinates

Molitor & Kuzmin had a take on time and moving. Fluorescents en masse tend to be impressive and that’s what Molitor & Kuzmin went with. Which is no surprise, they are masters of fluorescent heaps after all. The obviously site-specific Scratch fills a pit and the space above it with rigorously organized fluorescents, and on the bottom of the artwork there are discs spinning, with “time” or “zeit” written on them with neon. Yes, everything moves, and time especially so.

Time is spinning

The route was carefully planned, meandering through the building in an unexpected but comprehensive order, revealing a nook (and artwork) after another. The artworks are in unity with the space, rather than objects scattered into an exhibition hall. I’m really glad that the space is not stuffed with artworks, the ones there are, are quite enough. The exhibition is coherent thematically, but diverse in form. I hope there will be other light based exhibitions in the space, it is really apt to it!

Touristy Tip

It's hard to imagine that a Finnish power company would have a bar of their own, but that seems to be no problem in Germany: there’s a really nice beer garden in the back yard. 

 

Breathing the space

The Light & Space exhibition in Copenhagen Contemporary (3.12.21 – 4.9.22) was an ambitious and comprehensive overview on the style, providing maybe a little bit more than needed.

A part of Helen Pashgian's Untitled (2006–2007)

Copenhagen Contemporary is a gallery – or, rather, an exhibition space – specialized on installation art. With its several large halls it is apt for the job, and certainly a venue to pay attention to, especially light-art-wise. 

The gallery provides a wide range exhibition of Light & Space movement– or “movement”, since it wasn’t a coherent consortium, but a bunch of people doing roughly same kind of stuff, more or less aware of each other. The style was born in California in the 60’s, concentrating on, you guessed it, light and space. In addition to Californian sunlight, the local airplane and car industry contributed, too, with easily available new materials and technologies, and an interest in cooperation with artists. Thus the sleek, finished, technological look.

In the Light and Space movement, perception is the key, and light and space are the obvious tools to manipulate that. Installations are the usual format of Light and Space, for, you know, including light and space, but other genres of art are included as well. Artworks often count on the viewer: the artwork is not merely observed but experienced. And sometimes that is not just a fancy word. 

Some of the artworks in the exhibition deal with both light and space, some with either, some with neither, at least not more than artworks usually do. I’ll concentrate on the works checking both boxes. A crueler approach to choosing the artworks might have done the exhibition a tad more distinctive, instead of trying to give an example of everything. Anyhow, it was very well worth seeing as it was.

More of Robert Irwin's Light and Space below

Tricks and Treats

The strongest example of experiencing in the exhibition is Eric Orr’s Zero Mass, originally from 1969, a highly conceptual light art piece, with a minimal use of light. And I do mean minimal. The audience is lead to a totally dark, paper-walled room and supposed just to be there. And wait. Which I did. And realised I started to see in the dark. Well, almost. I think I caught a very weak light glowing behind the paper wall. The feeling of seeing absolutely nothing, only daring to move in super slow motion and then gradually getting a grasp of space and being able to move freely, is a tremendous one. It’s a bit like being able to breath the space, all of a sudden. I’m proud of myself for not whispering “Yeeeeesssss” in a husky demon voice to the ears of newcomers, wondering aloud if there are other people in the space. 

No photo, for obvious reasons.

There is no Light & Space exhibition without James Turrell. Here, the artwork is a walk-in installation Aftershock 2021 in his Ganzfeld series. If Orr’s piece made my brains create light, Turrell’s made it create smoke where there was none. And enjoy the colours. I am somewhat prejudiced towards artworks, where changing of colours is the main idea, always fearing the horror of a witless rainbow effect. In Turrell’s works, no fear of such. Random or not, the changes and colour combinations are surprising, deliberate and oh, so beautiful.

Persons standing in a traditional installation art poses in Turrell's piece.
James Turrell, Aftershock (2021) Courtesy the artist and Häusler Contemporary Zurich.
Light & Space at Copenhagen Contemporary, 2021. Photo: Florian Holzherr

Doug Wheeler’s LC 71 NY DZ 13 DW tricks the mind in yet another way. Even if I didn’t quite feel that my perception of time and space was challenged, as the exhibition text suggested, I did feel an elevating airiness and openness of space, which is quite surprising in a very closed, if white, dome. Mentally, I lost at least twenty pounds, the infinite white and convex floor fooling my sense of gravity.

A person standing in a traditional installation art pose in Wheeler's piece.
Doug Wheeler, LC 71 NY DZ 13 DW, 2013
Reinforced fiberglass, flat white titanium dioxide latex, LED light,
and DMX control 556,3 x 1958,3 x 2060,9 cm
© Doug Wheeler Courtesy David Zwirner
Light & Space, Copenhagen Contemporary, 2021.
Photo: David Stjernholm

Art for Gods, Possibly Not on Purpose

It takes me some time to figure if the hovering daisy-colored spot in the middle of Helen Pashgian’s Untitled (2021) is light or matter. Of course, it makes no difference. Even if the word “temple” was mentioned in the text defining the Turrell piece, this artwork reminded me most of a one. The room was the closest I can imagine a modern-day worshipper of Egyptian Sun god Ra could ask for.

Welcome to the temple of Hipster-Ra

Mary Corse’s light canvases seem like potential religious art in my mind as well. Almost all of the religions pay a great deal of attention to light, inner or outer, and it makes me wonder why light isn’t used more often as material in, for example, altar pieces? I mean, light would tell way more about spirituality than a dead body. But what do I know, I’m an agnostic. Anyhow, the glowing Untitled (2019) is a great source of inner peace, even if it was placed in quite a busy corner.

Mary Corse, Untitled (Electric Light) (2019)
© Mary Corse Courtesy the artist and Kayne Griffin, Los Angeles
Light & Space, Copenhagen Contemporary, 2021.
Photo: David Stjernholm

Light, Space, Art and Some Unforgivable Awesomeness

Robert Irwin’s Light and Space (2007) is another edition of his recurrent Light and Space series, rethought for every exhibition space. It is quite impressive here, yes, but I was spoiled in Light Art Space’s version of 2021 in Kraftwerk Berlin. It was absolutely great, so perfect in that space, that any other edition just doesn't do it for me anymore. It really was space as art, not art in a space. Even if I try to tell myself that they are all different artworks, I just cannot forget that awesomeness. 

Sorry, Robert.

Light and Space in Light & Space, where it was light in space

Light and Space in Light Art Space, where it was space as art

So Far Unfinished Web

The artworks in the exhibition are advertised with words like magnificent and gigantic, which is not the whole picture, to say the least. Yes, some of the artworks are big indeed, but there are quite a few ordinary sized artworks as well. Words like that lay out expectations that I’m not sure the subtle, stylish, and delicate artworks of the exhibition fulfil. Nor do I think they should.

There were a lot of sections in the exhibition, like Nature as Material or Architecture and Art. All of these were great themes, even if some were not that essential to Light and Space movement. The exhibition was also a good summary of who’s who in Light and Space, but even there were a few hangarounds – although interesting artists in their own right. The wide scape of themes left some of the artworks quite unconnected to each other, or even to the main theme of the exhibition. 

In my dream world, this would be a crash course to Light and Space, followed by a whole series going deeper in the themes introduced here. 

I would go! 

The perfectly rough façade of the CC

Other People Writing about Light & Space

• Nanna Friis / Kunstkritikk: Quantity Consciousness 
• Jeni Porter / Wallpaper: ‘Light & Space’ at Copenhagen Contemporary: ‘moving art without moving elements’ 
• Veena / Mycafe101 Light & space – Copenhagen Contemporary