More Light!

MORE LIGHT!

MORE LIGHT! November 10, 2022 – January 7, 2023

Larry Bell, Marsha Cottrell, Ryan Crotty, Karin Davie, Adam Henry, Yayoi Kusama, Mariko Mori, Luke Murphy, Iván Navarro, Helen Pashgian, Charles Ross, Esther Ruiz, David Shaw, Alyson Shotz, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Lauretta Vinciarelli “More light, more light! Open the window so that more light may come in.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe CHART is pleased to present More Light!, an exhibition that includes a selection of international artists for whom light is an integral part of their creative practice. There will be an opening reception on Thursday, November 10th, from 6 – 8 pm, and the exhibition will remain on view through January 7, 2023.

Artists have long grappled with capturing the ineffable powers of light and depicting its effects in a more tangible form, whether it is by dissecting the perception of prismatic hues, rendering our natural world as something closer to the sublime, or harnessing sensorial understanding into static physical images.

The exhibition, whose title comes from the famed last words of German poet, philosopher, and color theorist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, features artworks that range from technical explorations of optical effects to efforts rooted in spiritual and metaphysical realms. Transcending any single art historical movement or genre, the contrasting mediums and motivations serve to spark new discourses between a diverse selection of works. More Light! reflects on the timeless and universal quest to express the essential impact light has on our perceptions of human experience.

For some artists in the exhibition, light might be used as a literal medium, like Iván Navarro, who uses reflected electricity often as a metaphor for political and social commentary, or Luke Murphy, whose energetic, animated LED sculptures offer a formal look at modernist abstraction through contemporary technology. Others, however, like painters Karin Davie or Adam Henry, use the illusion of light produced by pigments to create pronounced optical effects—gradients or tonal shifts—that stimulate and engage the viewer with feelings of larger representational potential.

Driven by their material experiments, Larry Bell, Charles Ross, and Helen Pashgian establish a refined approach toward the interplay of light on physical and visual perception. Additional sculptures in More Light!, such as the works of Alyson Shotz or David Shaw, similarly engage with the refraction and absorption of light, albeit with more organic shapes and materials.

Eliding present phenomenological experience, certain pieces, like Hiroshi Sugimoto’s “Winnetka Drive-In, Paramount”, use light to record the collapsing of temporal reality— in this case, a single prolonged exposure of a feature-length film, reducing the thousands of individual frames to one glowing, white rectangle. Looking beyond the bounds of our corporeal state entirely, Mariko Mori explores the limits of our materially knowable dimension, with the luminous “Genesis IV” using UV-cured pigment to portray potentialhidden universes yet realized, operating as a catalyst for the viewer’s own transcendence.

Whether rooted in the physical or operating on the boundaries of our perceptions, the artworks in More Light! use this fundamental agent to expand what we see, or think we see, as well as what we know, highlighting the crucial link between understanding and illumination.

2 LARRY BELL (b. 1939) Chicago, IL Bell is one of the most influential artists to emerge from the Light and Space movement of the 1960s. Bell is most commonly known for his minimalist transparent cubes in which he combines transparent and mirrored panes of glass to conflate the viewer, object, and its surroundings.

Thriving on the interplay of shape, light, and environment, his sculptures surpass traditional bounds of the medium while also expanding visual and physical fields of perception.

“Although we tend to think of glass as a window, it is a solid liquid that has at once three distinctive qualities: it reflects light, it absorbs light, and it transmits light all at the same time.”

Larry Bell Cube #15 (Amber), 2005 colored glass coated with inconel Cube: 20 x 20 x 20 inches (50.8 x 50.8 x 50.8 cm) Pedestal: 36 x 20 x 20 inches (91.4 x 50.8 x 50.8 cm)

4 MARSHA COTTRELL (b. 1964) Philadelphia, PA While employed as a magazine freelancer in the late 1990s, Cottrell established her innovative use of an office computer and electrostatic laser printer, maneuvering the prosaic apparatus to function as a markmaking tool. In work of the past several years, vector-based lines and shapes found in the software tool palette are printed in layers of carbonbased toner onto sheets of handmade paper, creating one-of-a-kind works that traverse drawing and printmaking, painting, and photography.

Her Aperture Series interprets the computer monitor as both a space through which the landscape is seen as well as a place where it is created. Each image is centered around a strong horizon contained by window-like borders, and a distinct quality of natural or artificial light emanates from each work. These works develop slowly and gradually on the paper via multiple passes through the printer while geometric shapes are incrementally moved on the screen. There is no digital file that corresponds to the final printed object.

The relationship between body, computer screen and digital realm has been instrumental in Cottrell’s work: symmetry, intensity of focal point, and a distinct vibrational energy reflect a one-on-one relationship with the computer monitor and the space within and beyond it. In all, the imagery of Cottrell’s works can be read not as landscapes or interiors in the literal sense, but as internal and visionary states amid the everyday.

Marsha Cottrell Untitled (Mixed Dark_Red, Yellow, Blue, Green), 2022 archival pigment on digital ground on paper 20 x 15 inches (50.8 x 38.1 cm) Framed: 22 1/2 x 17 1/2 inches (57.2 x 44.5 cm)

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Marsha Cottrell Aperture Series (57), 2018 laser toner on paper, unique 11 5/8 x 18 1/8 inches (29.5 x 46 cm) Framed: 17 1/4 x 23 5/8 inches (43.82 x 60 cm)

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Marsha Cottrell Untitled, 2022 laser toner on paper 11 x 8 1/2 inches (27.9 x 21.6 cm) Framed: 17 x 14.5 inches (43.2 x 36.8 cm)

7 RYAN CROTTY (b. 1977) Auburn, NE Crotty creates non-representational color field paintings rooted in the process intensive traditions of printmaking. Highlighting visual evidence of the canvas support structure, surface imperfections and materiality, he uses translucent paint to generate an interplay of light and color that challenges visual interpretation of a two-dimensional surface.

In Crotty’s words: “By applying layers of translucent paint, I generate aberrations in color and surface that reveal evidence of the painting as a physical object. The canvas acts as a support for pigment and binding medium that allows color and light to coalesce. Primary colors blend together to create secondary and tertiary minimalist color field paintings.”

Ryan Crotty Now the Sky is Grey, 2022 acrylic, gloss gel, and modeling paste on linen 24 x 20 inches (61 x 50.8 cm)

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Ryan Crotty Slipstream, 2022 acrylic, gloss gel, and modeling paste on linen 14 x 11 inches (35.6 x 27.9 cm)

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Ryan Crotty Galaxian, 2022 acrylic, gloss gel, and modeling paste on linen 40 x 20 inches (101.6 x 50.8 cm)

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KARIN DAVIE (b. 1965) Toronto, ON Davie’s paintings extend the tradition of gestural abstraction and combine it with optical styles rooted in the 1960s and 1970s. The works are concerned with the formal language of painting, and, at the same time, embody the deep physicality necessary for constructing each brushstroke. In Davie’s most recent series, like In Out, In Out, the artist has reshaped the looping, swirling stripe motif from her earlier works into rhythmic fields of wavy strokes.

Here the image has a more pronounced internal light source, and glows with a feeling of representation, with the gradation of light giving it a quality of something fading in or out. It is an image that’s breathing—or transforming. There is an illusion of space that goes both back and forth and up and down, with an all over rhythmic movement. These works all have a tension between the gesture and repetition—abandon and control. With an emphasis on color and unbroken mimetic gestures, Davie works to engage the viewer on both an optical and physical level.

Karin Davie In Out, In Out (with Gradation) no 2, 2022 oil on canvas 54 x 42 inches (137.2 x 106.7 cm)

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Karin Davie Beam Me Up no 3 (Small), 2022 oil on canvas over wood 30 x 24 x 7/8 inches (76.2 x 61 x 2.2 cm) Each panel: 30 x 12 x 7/8 inches (76.2 x 30.5 x 2.2 cm)

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ADAM HENRY (b. 1974) Pueblo, CO Henry’s work is often informed by the systems of visual and oral languages, evident in his use of recurring geometries, optical color play, and impossible circular references. Working with predetermined parameters—such as limiting his color palette to red, yellow, blue and violet in response to Goethe’s Theory of Colors—Henry explores the physical experience of painting and the subjectivity of visual perception.

The pair of pieces on view here are painted according to a similar structure, using the addition of a fine layer of highly diluted white to achieve ultimately a dense, immaculate white. They start from the colorless and culminate in a whiteness that is synonymous with neutrality. The modifications mainly occur around the edges of the canvases: the four colours used by the artist in his painting system extend in their verticality to the limits of the surface or are simply absent.

Adam Henry Untitled (ctVBst), 2022 gesso on linen 61 x 48 inches (154.9 x 121.9 cm)

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Adam Henry Untitled (YsptchD), 2022 gesso and acrylic on linen 61 x 48 inches (154.9 x 121.9 cm)

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Side view

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YAYOI KUSAMA (b. 1929) Matsumoto, Japan Well known for her use of dense patterns of polka dots and nets, as well as her immersive large-scale installations, Kusama works across mediums of painting, sculpture, film, and installation. After arriving to the United States in 1957, she quickly found herself at the epicenter of New York’s avant-garde.

Kusama produced the first of her astonishing Net paintings in 1959—vast canvases measuring up to 33 feet in width, entirely covered in rhythmic undulations of small, thickly painted loops. The inherent philosophical paradox that “infinity” could be quantified and constrained within the arbitrary structure of a readymade canvas—combined with the subjective and obsessional implications of their process, distinguish these works from Minimalist abstraction.

The mesmerizing, transcendent spaces are reinforced by Kusama’s psychosomatic associations to her paintings.

Strongly influenced by the hallucinations of flashing lights she experienced in childhood—Kusama articulates her vivid experiences of the world as defined by distorted and enhanced colors and shapes. Residing in the space between presentation and abstraction, her paintings serve as representations of both natural observations and inner mind-scapes that cannot easily be represented.

Courtesy Private Collection

Yayoi Kusama Wind, 1999 pastel on paper 19 7/8 x 15 inches (50.5 x 38.1 cm) Framed: 26 3/4 x 21 3/8 x 1 1/2 inches (67.9 x 54.3 cm)

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MARIKO MORI (b. 1967) Tokyo, Japan Mori’s multidisciplinary practice, often featuring fantastical tableaus with the artist adorned in otherworldly costumes, focuses on themes of spirituality and transcendence, intertwined with traditional cultural motifs and futuristic technology.

The Genesis photo painting series is based on drawings inspired by the oldest creation myth in Japan, Kojiki. The source of this brilliant yet invisible light is the Creator, Amano Nakanushi no Kami (literally “Heaven-Center God”), the first god to emerge in Kojiki who embodies the immeasurably and infinitely profound love. The great invisible light reaches every single corner of the world.

Mariko Mori Genesis IV, 2022 UV cured pigment, dibond and aluminum 63 1/2 x 3 inches (161.3 x 7.6 cm) Edition of 5 plus 2 AP, (#3/5)

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LUKE MURPHY (b. 1963) Boston, MA Murphy’s dazzling light sculptures are comprised of LED panels, found objects and constructed armatures. Murphy uses the panels to display abstract effects utilizing nearly endless color and tempo variations, foregrounding the furtive beauty hidden in mass-produced displays.

The artist shares formal affinities with modernist painting, as well as the work of minimalist sculptors Donald Judd and Dan Flavin. Like a painter with a palette covered with oil paint, Murphy uses computer code to deepen a blue or lighten a red. The ambition in Murphy’s project is to recreate the qualities of abstract painting and sculpture with the completely miraculous yet banal materials of coffee carts and 99 cent store advertising. Murphy gently moves us towards human warmth through plastic advertising panels, binary computer code, and his respect for labor and craft.

Luke Murphy Starlight, Warm and Cool, 2022 steel studs, LED matrix panels, video driver hardware, software, power supplies, PC, code 93 x 32 x 28 inches (236.2 x 81.3 x 71.1 cm)

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IVÁN NAVARRO (b. 1972) Santiago, Chile Navarro grew up under the regime of Pinochet before moving to New York in 1997. Engaging the language of American minimalism, he established his artistic identity building electric sculptures charged with political critique, using light as his primary medium. He uses illuminations, optical illusions and wordplay as tools to transform space, shift perceptions and explore questions of power and control. Over the years, he has created pieces that, behind their enticing appearance as light installations, evoke the darkest themes of our time: torture, imprisonment, domination, north-south inequalities and political propaganda.

Iván Navarro Duct, 2015 neon, plywood, glass, mirror, one-way mirror, and electric energy 12 x 48 x 48 inches (30.5 x 121.9 x 121.9 cm) Edition 2/3 + 1 AP

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HELEN PASHGIAN (b. 1934) Pasadena, CA Pashgian is a pioneer and pre-eminent member of the 1960s Light and Space movement in Southern California. Using an innovative application of industrial epoxies, plastics, and resins, Pashgian’s works are characterized by their semi-translucent surfaces that appear to filter and somehow contain illumination.

Comprised of vibrantly colored columns, discs, and spheres that often feature an isolated element either suspended, embedded, or encased within, Pashgian refers to her work as “presences” in space.

A phenomenon of constant movement occurs as the viewer interacts with the work: coming and going, appearing and receding, visible and invisible. For Pashgian, light is not simply a metaphor, symbol, or allegory; light itself is both the medium and the message.

Helen Pashgian Untitled, 2010-2011 cast epoxy Framed: 12 x 12 x 2 inches (30.5 x 30.5 x 5.1 cm)

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CHARLES ROSS (b. 1937) Philadelphia, PA Using sunlight and starlight as the source for his art, Ross creates largescale prisms to project solar spectrum into architectural spaces; focuses sunlight into powerful beams to create solar burn works; draws the quantum behavior of light with dynamite; and works with a variety of other media including photography and video.

In 1969, he shifted the emphasis of his artwork from that of the minimal prism object, to the prism as an instrument through which light revealed itself so that the orchestration of spectrum light became the artwork. This began his lifelong interest in projecting large bands of solar spectrum into living spaces.

Charles Ross Prism Column, 1966/2015 acrylic 96 x 4 1/2 x 4 1/2 inches (243.8 x 11.4 x 11.4 cm) Edition 3/3

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ESTHER RUIZ (b. 1986) Houston, TX Ruiz creates objects that operate simultaneously as miniature landscapes from a distant future and actual size sculptures informed by the family of Minimalism. The cylinder, the semicircle, the triangle, and other Euclidean forms are combined into colorful and expressive freestanding sculpture.

She uses the minimalist vocabulary to create relics of imagined experiences. Of her creative process, Ruiz says: “The imagery I work with is born out of exploring and researching fictional places imagined in my mind...this imagined place acts not a form of escapism but of inclusion. I finally found a place that I belong, and ultimately, my work exists as an effort to visually explain an emotional state of mind with mathematical acuteness, hence the paired down materials and forms.”

She begins with a collection of emotions, memories, impressions of light, and sounds, then translates them into an abstract geometric aesthetic.

The newer works, shifting away from the cylindrical forms, but still adhering to a strict material diet, act as objects from these landscapes. Some act as tomes, containing foreign information; others as stand-ins for familiar domestic objects but with fundamental idiosyncrasies. The series of Wells began in 2014 as wormholes or portals to these worlds. The reflective material invites the viewer to join this fantastical world. But by also warping the viewer and their surroundings, the Wells, placed above eye level, induce one to look beyond or through their current place and to imagine their own world.

Esther Ruiz Volume IX, 2022 neon, MDF, plaster, hardware, paint 19 1/2 x 12 x 4 inches (49.5 x 30.5 x 10.2 cm)

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Esther Ruiz Volume X, 2022 neon, MDF, plaster, hardware, paint 19 3/4 x 14 x 5 3/4 inches (50.2 x 35.6 x 14.6 cm)

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Esther Ruiz Unidentified Object V, 2022 neon, acrylic, foam, epoxy, concrete, paint, hardware 11 x 12 x 12 inches (27.9 x 30.5 x 30.5 cm)

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DAVID SHAW (b. 1965) Rochester, NY Shaw’s work combines manmade materials—steel, hand-blown glass, holographic laminate—with found, natural objects—most often tree branches without bark—to create sculpture that explores the indistinct boundaries we pretend exist between nature, technology, and consciousness.

“I am interested in the edges of systems, the threshold areas and liminal spaces, where things breakdown and accidents happen. Where something can be present and ‘not there’ at the same time, forming and dissolving, in a state of flux, raw and vulnerable. I am interested in the moment before conscious identification occurs.”

David Shaw Untitled, 2021 wood, steel, holographic laminate 48 1/2 x 48 1/2 x 2 1/2 inches (123.2 x 123.2 x 6.3 cm)

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David Shaw Net, 2017 wood, holographic laminate, epoxy, flocking, paint 47 x 107 1/2 x 13 inches (119.4 x 273.1 x 33 cm)

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David Shaw Knot, 2022 burnt found plywood, wood, holographic laminate, paint 67 3/8 x 41 1/2 x 2 inches (171.1 x 105.4 x 5.1 cm)

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ALYSON SHOTZ (b. 1964) Glendale, AZ Shotz is an artist who works across media, including sculpture, photography, and video. Known for manipulating natural and synthetic materials to investigate modes of perception, experiential boundaries, and natural/scientific phenomena, Shotz often uses small parts to create large-scale sculptural objects that explore space, often through the transformative implementation or capture of light.

Alyson Shotz Rim of the Hour, 2022 weld printed steel, paint 60 x 42 x 40 inches (152.4 x 106.7 x 101.6 cm) Edition 1 of 3 (+ 1 AP)

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HIROSHI SUGIMOTO (b. 1948) Tokyo, Japan Sugimoto’s masterful photographs exemplify both the craftsman’s will to visual beauty and perfection, and an incisive exploration of philosophical notions of space and time, imagination and reality, science and history.

Drawing on the classical photographic tradition, Sugimoto creates distilled, meditative images which unite the concrete and abstract, and contain meaningful conceptual underpinnings which seek to materialize the “invisible realm of the mind” and the unconscious. In his process, Sugimoto seeks to comprehend the nature of perception, exploring duration and temporality through photography, and an understanding of how radical shifts through the past enlighten the present.

The Theaters series began as an experiment in which Sugimoto used a long exposure (dictated by the duration of each film) to capture the thousands of moving images on a single frame of film. The “afterimage” of this long exposure is one of a gleaming, pure white screen, which remains in our visual memory beyond the physical experience of the actual film screening.

Courtesy of Marian Goodman Gallery

Hiroshi Sugimoto Winnetka Drive-In, Paramount, 1993 gelatin silver print Neg. #710-L Image: 47 x 58 3/4 inches (119.4 x 149.2 cm) Framed: 60 x 71 3/4 x 3 inches (152.4 x 182.2 x 7.6 cm) Edition of 5 (#1/5)

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LAURETTA VINCIARELLI (1943 - 2011) Arbe, Italy Favoring a medium confined to the wingspan of her brush stroke, Vinciarelli’s watercolors render the epic intimate, the public private.

Silhouetted shadows stream through empty urban and suburban spaces, converging subway tunnel and stepped well. Calling on quests embarked upon with Donald Judd over their decade-long partnership, Vinciarelli bleeds together the familiar light of Rome, Marfa and New York. Using water to Flavin’s light and color to Turrell’s space, Vinciarelli painstakingly layers gradient washes and ink rendering in order to play between socalled binaries, drawing us in until we remark on the wholeness of the void, on how everything contains its opposite.

“Color (said Goethe) is the pain of light”. So wrote Joan Ockman in a poem preserved by Vinciarelli until the end of her life. Down to her very last works, Vinciarelli remains in search of light, the sensual intangible via the trace of a pigment, the character of a wash, or the residue of a moment, a movement, or gesture.

Lauretta Vinciarelli Night Five, 1996 watercolor on paper 30 x 22 1/2 inches (76.2 x 57.1 cm) Framed: 34 1/4 x 26 1/2 inches (87 x 67.3 cm)

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