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Indepth Arts News:
"Special Exhibition and Permanent Installation Provide Overview of Two Decades of Dan Flavin s Work"
2001-05-24 until 2001-09-09
Dia Center for the Arts
New York, NY,
USA
The Dan Flavin Art Institute, in Bridgehampton, New York, opens
for its summer season on May 24, 2001, with a special
exhibition, ICONS, 1961-1963, and the Institutes permanent
installation, DAN FLAVIN: NINE WORKS. Together, the
exhibitions offer an overview of Flavins work from his early
experiments with electric light through his adoption of
standard fluorescent fixtures and tubes as the primary medium
for his artwork. The Dan Flavin Art Institute, which is open
this year through September 9, is maintained by Dia Center for
the Arts for public exhibition each summer.
On view in the first-floor gallery, icons, 1961-1963,
includes works that represent early manifestations of the
artist's enduring preoccupation with simple forms and electric
light. For the works in this series, Flavin combined painted
boxes with fluorescent and incandescent lights in a manner that
emphasizes simplicity and explicitness. These early works mark
the development of Flavin's use of fluorescent light as a
medium and are among the works by the artist that are now
considered a cornerstone of the art of the 1960s.
Planned by Flavin for the second-floor gallery of the
Bridgehampton space, Nine Works traces the artist's practice
from 1963-by which time he was working solely with standard
fluorescent fixtures and tubes-to 1981. In creating Nine
Works, Flavin conceived of the lights and the architecture as
a single, continuous installation. By manipulating the formal,
phenomenal, and referential characteristics of light, the
installation asks viewers to consider a series of provocative
contrasts-between colors, intensities of light, structure and
formlessness, the obvious and the mysterious, and the serious
and the humorous.
Dan Flavin
Born in 1933 in New York City, where he later studied art
history at the New School for Social Research, Dan Flavin
exhibited nationally from 1963 onward. He lived and worked for
most of the last twenty years of his life in Bridgehampton and
Wainscott, Long Island. Flavin died on November 29, 1996.
The Dan Flavin Art Institute
The Dan Flavin Art Institute is located in the former First
Baptist Church of Bridgehampton. Originally built as a
firehouse in 1908, the building operated as a church from 1924
to the mid-1970s. In 1979, Dia purchased the church as a
gallery for Dan Flavin. The building was renovated under the
direction of the artist with the assistance of Dia's James
Schaeufele and architect Richard Gluckman. The renovation
evokes the building's former uses: a newel post in the entrance
hall is painted bright red in memory of the building's years as
a firehouse, and the original church doors have been moved to
the entrance of a small exhibition space on the second floor
that contains memorabilia, including a neon cross, collected
from and about the church.
The Dan Flavin Art Institute is located on Corwith Avenue, off
Main Street. Hours are Thursday through Sunday, 12 noon to 6
pm; suggested contribution is $3.
Dia Center for the Arts
Dia Center for the Arts is a tax-exempt charitable
organization. Established in 1974, the organization has become
one of the largest in the United States dedicated to
contemporary art and culture. In fulfilling this commitment,
Dia sustains diverse programming in visual arts, poetry,
education, and critical discourse and debate. Information
about Dia and its projects is available at www.diacenter.org.
In addition to maintaining The Dan Flavin Art Institute, Dia's
support for Flavin and his work includes the commission of
site-specific installations in Marfa, Texas; Grand Central
Station, New York City; and, most recently, in 1996, for the
staircases of Dia's temporary exhibition facility at 548 West
22nd Street, New York City. Dia's permanent collection
includes more than forty additional works by the artist, a
selection of which will be featured in a long-term installation
at Dia's new museum in Beacon, New York, scheduled to open in
2002.
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