CHARLES DARWENT Sunday 10 February 2013
“The
light here is electric, which is to say artificial, which is to say new.
Underlying all the work in Light Show is a Promethean anxiety, a wonder at (and
lurking fear of) modern man's ability to make light for himself. Light is what
we see by: no light, no vision. If that light is artificial, then so,
potentially, is what it allows us to see. Something at the heart of the way we
believe – an idea of enlightenment, of revelation through light – is made
uncertain. We are like the captives in Plato's cave, only worse, seeing what we
see more brightly than they do, but with all the less assurance that it is
real. Phew. If that sounds as though Light Show is going to make for heavy
viewing, then the opposite is true. The art in it tends towards the twinkly.
Thus the first work you see as you walk in, Leo Villareal's Cylinder II – a
20-foot column of white LEDs, bubbling effervescently like a 7-Up ad.
Villareal's work could be at Piccadilly Circus, except that all it advertises
is itself. That, I guess, is the point. Cylinder II seems to be telling us
something, selling us something. But in the end it is merely pretty, a closed
loop, a self-answering question.”
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