Light material

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OCA MA student Amelia Wilson reports on an interesting show in London for OCA:
‘Light: it’s essential for life, like air. It regulates our sleep, daily routines and mood – but isn’t something you naturally connect with art. Light Show at the Hayward Gallery, proves light can be used effectively as a material.
What is noticeable about this exhibition is how interactive it is. Light pervades the surrounding area and sometimes creates heat. It reaches out and touches the viewer physically in a way painting or sculpture cannot to connecting with the audience. It provokes questioning around works were made. The luminosity and sensory qualities of light appeal to a wider audience than a standard exhibition and Light Show has been curated to be accessible for those with learning and visual difficulties as well as children.
There are several side-rooms, ensuring each exhibit can ‘shine’ without interference from those nearby, as many pieces need a controlled black-out or ‘white room’ to retain the purity of light or environment. The show begins with large works by Leo Villareal and David Batchelor that command the space. Villareal’s Cylinder III(2012)is a mesmerising construction of concentric cylinders of twinkling LEDs that appear to dance in the created space. Batchelor’s Magic Hour (2004/7), a grouping of reversed coloured light boxes, is mesmerising in a different way. The interest is in the glow they emit at the edges not the construction itself: the space between the construction and the wall which is filled with nothing physical, but ‘something’ that is a visible colour.
Anthony McCall’s You and I, Horizontal (2005), is delightfully interactive. A darkened room, enhanced by artificial mist, is lit by a stark, shaped spotlight and allows the audience to interrupt, interact and play with the emitted beam of light to see how it moves and experience its ‘essence’. Many of the artists utilise environments or optical illusions with light. Doug Wheeler’s ‘experiential environment’ Untitled (1969) is a white room with a large, square, translucent light on the main wall. The square seems to float and you sense free falling into the space within. Ivan Navarro has two pieces both using lights and mirrors to create a ‘spatial infinity’ – even appearing to make you disappear, whilst restraining you in a box for all to see: there, but not there; all dependent on the filtering of light.
My stand-out piece was Chromosaturation (1965-2013) by Carlos Cruz-Diez. Three white chambers are flooded with different ambient light: blue, red and green. Spending time in each chamber allows the eyes to become accustomed to the immersive light until it is almost white again. Moving into the next chamber is painful – like walking into bright light, but the intensity has not changed only the colour. Most fascinating is the chamber just left, whose colour became insipid, is now vibrant again. This piece cleverly plays on the physiology of the eye to make us consider how we see, perceive and respond to light and colour. We are seeing ‘a trick of the light’ in its truest form.’
Light Show runs until April 28.
Top Image:Cruz-Diez
Second image:Batchelor
Third image: Anthony McCall
Bottom image: Villareal