Doug Wheeler
dal 23/5/2012 al 10/11/2012
Segnalato da
23/5/2012
Doug Wheeler
Frac Lorraine 49 Nord 6 Est, Metz
A pioneer of the California Light and Space movement, proposes three new site-specific spaces of perception, three luminous installations. His spaces appeal not only to the retina but also to the body as a whole, and thus invite us to an approach both initiatory and meditative.
Dis-orientation: this might be the motto for
Lorraine and the Grande Région. This summer,
defamiliarization is, in fact, a must in each
of our events! As part of MONO — 20 monographic
exhibitions taking place in Sarre, Lorraine,
and Luxembourg — in Metz, we will be featuring
Doug Wheeler’s immersive environments. The
American artist offers a perceptual experience
beyond words and images! He invites us to a
limitless comprehension of time and space.
Unforgettable! Elsewhere, here and there
between Briey, Saint-Dié-des-Vosges, and
Epinal, cartography is being revised in light
of projections
challenged by artists. Finally,
geographic wandering will be the pretext for
a series of attempts to unravel the issues at
stake in a new geography that would take into
account the body and all its senses! A powerful
moment of shared points of view with a filmmaker,
a performer, and lecturers off the beaten
track. Let’s turn our back on the world mapped
out by Westerners and make room for the indigenous
peoples’ sensory experience of space.
It’s a chance to give the floor to lost
voices and to let resonate the belief in other
plausible worlds!
Doug Wheeler
Experience light and indefinite space! Doug
Wheeler, a pioneer of the California Light and
Space movement¹, proposes three new site-specific
spaces of perception, three luminous installations.
Since the 1960s, the famous American
artist has been unhinging our senses and guiding
us to inhabit moments of liminality, instants
of suspension in pure light. His spaces appeal
not only to the retina but also to the body as
a whole, and thus invite us to an approach both
initiatory and meditative.
For his first solo exhibition in Europe since
1975, the Californian artist has created two new
phosphorescent pieces, in addition to conceiving
a new perceptual environment in his famed series
of “light walls”. His immersive environments
subtly absorb the viewer and provoke a unique
experience, which does not engage reason but is
addressed directly to the body, through all the
senses.
A poet of light, Doug Wheeler creates atmospheres
of a rare sensuality. He challenges our perception
of depth and volume, even while our bodies,
clothed in light, dissolve in the white space
that has grown infinite. It is a question then
of exploring the very substance of light and of
provoking unprecedented sensorial perceptions.
¹ The “Light and Space” movement was created
in the mid-1960s on the West Coast of the
United States.
BIOGRAPHY
Born in 1939 in Globe, Arizona (US)
Works in Santa Fe, New Mexico,
and Santa Monica, California (US)
Doug Wheeler began his career as a painter in
the 1960s while he studied at the Chouinard
Institute of Art (today the California Institute
of Art) in Los Angeles. His work was subsequently
presented in numerous exhibitions, notably:
at the Tate Gallery in London and the Schmela
Gallery in Dusseldorf in 1970; at the Salvatore
Ala Gallery in Milan in 1975; at MoMa PS1 in
New York in 1976; at the Museum of Contemporary
Art in Los Angeles in 1986; and in 2000 at the
Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. In 2008,
he created an environmental installation using
ice and neon as part of his design for the
exhibition Upside Down — Les Arctiques at the
Quai Branly Museum in Paris. He collaborated
with the noted French architect Jean de Gastines
on the scenography. He inaugurated a solo exhibition,
entitled SA MI 75 DZ 12, at the David
Zwirner Gallery in New York in January 2012.
Image: 68 VEN MCASD 11, 1968/2011. Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego. Photo: P. Scholz Rittermann, © 2012 Doug Wheeler
Press contact:
Claudine Colin Communication contact: Valentine Dolla valentine@claudinecolin.com Tel. 0033 (0)1 42726001
Press
Éléonore Jacquiau Chamska coordination@fraclorraine.org
Valérie Audren-Guelton Tél. 0033 (0)3 87742002 communication@fraclorraine.org
Opening Thursday 24 May at 7pm
49 Nord 6 Est
Fonds régional d’art contemporain de Lorraine
1 bis rue des Trinitaires, F-57000 Metz
Hours:
tue – fri: 2−7 PM
sat – sun: 11 AM−7 PM
Admission free