Dan Flavin’s work is often encountered as an experience — immediate, immersive, difficult to ignore. But in this exhibition, what holds is something quieter: a set of conditions that must be kept — repeated and maintained.
Here, that experience remains present, but it does not seem to be the work’s primary concern.
What holds the exhibition together is not light as sensation, but light as a way of attending to architecture. The fluorescent units are familiar, almost standardized. What varies is the room itself — its corners, seams, openings, and planes — and how these elements receive, interrupt, or quietly redirect illumination.
The fixtures do not behave as singular objects. They function as components within a set of conditions that remain remarkably steady. If a lamp is replaced, nothing essential is lost. What matters is not the individual unit, but the arrangement it sustains: placement, angle, spacing, and contact with the wall. Authorship feels dispersed, held lightly by the structure rather than asserted through material presence.
This becomes especially clear in the corner works. Corners do not absorb light evenly. They compress it, fracture it, allow it to linger unevenly. The work does not correct these irregularities. It seems to rely on them. Light does not smooth the space; it listens to it.
Moving between rooms, the exhibition does not unfold as a progression. Each installation holds its own position, shaped by the specific limits of its setting. Thresholds do not announce transition so much as register difference. Perception shifts, but nothing accumulates. The work does not ask to be completed by movement or resolved through comparison.
What might initially read as minimal reveals itself, over time, as carefully maintained. Structure precedes expression, but without force. The work depends on the room’s willingness to hold a set of instructions — to keep alignments intact, distances measured, conditions consistent. Institutions do not so much present these works as tend to them.
Light, here, does not dramatize space or invite interpretation. It rests against surfaces, tests their edges, and remains. The work persists through attention to its conditions — quiet, exacting, and sustained.
