To produce works, or rather, "situations" of great emotional intensity from extremely simple devices, is what the master of neon, Dan Flavin (1933-1996), achieved. The Kunstmuseum Basel brings together some of his major works.
Entitled The Diagonal of Personal Ecstasy , a simple neon sign fixed diagonally to a wall by the self-taught artist (who would soon be considered, along with Donald Judd, a pioneer of Minimal art) marked a turning point in the history of contemporary art in May 1963. Dan Flavin not only freed color from the two-dimensionality of the canvas, but he also conflated it with light. “Very quickly, Dan Flavin understood how much space and the viewer's perception could be transformed by the power and dynamism of his tool, which was both light and color . ”
"Hyperpresence of the immaterial"
Tangible and intangible, hypnotic and untouchable, dazzling and enveloping, transforming both the viewer's mental space and the architectural space itself, his neon installations invariably sought to achieve the "hyperpresence of the immaterial . " Placed on the floor, wall, ceiling, in a corner, as a barrier, or in a corridor, and available in the four standard lengths and nine commercially available colors, the fluorescent tubes, placed in specific situations (Dan Flavin himself described his art as "situational"), are most often dedicated to other artists , when they do not refer to concrete events, such as the atrocities of war or police brutality. Such is the poignant Monument for those who have been killed in ambush (to PK who reminded me about death), dedicated to the memory of those killed in the Vietnam War, consisting of a spray of glowing red tubes piercing and saturating the space.
1 – Suzanne Pagé, curator of the Dan Flavin retrospective held in 2006 at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris.
2 – Such as Constantin Brancusi, Vladimir Tatlin, Jasper Johns and Barnett Newman.
From 2 March to 18 August 2024
kunstmuseumbasel.ch
