dayoutlast: Bruce Nauman "Untitled (Equilateral Triangle)," a large-scale outdoor sculpture, 1980 @ MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles at the Schindler House

dayoutlast is a record of my direct engagement with mostly contemporary art, mostly Los Angelean.

As this blog has evolved since its 2010 inception, so has my perspective. What I once perceived as central within the investigation was what was central, literally, within the photographic frame that I shared here. While still an important consideration, such thinking has also given way to more peripheral considerations, ones also accompanied occasionally by text (written manifestation of thought) and the oscillations between them. What's missing here are larger unknowns surrounding issues of presentation and representation; the amount of time and space it actually takes to accomplish such first-hand observations; and the quandaries between documentation and interpretation.

Despite my attempt to communicate here with image and text what is essential in some respect about the artwork, neither representation should ever be considered a substitution for the primary viewing experience. Of course, occasionally there are exceptions.

Most of the time, these posts are merely remnants---residual fragments---from my last day out.

--Justin Lowman

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Bruce Nauman "Untitled (Equilateral Triangle)," a large-scale outdoor sculpture, 1980 @ MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles at the Schindler House

“There are two kinds of light - the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.”---James Thurber

When confronting Nauman's 1980 sculpture here, one can't help but think of a Turrell "skyspace;" a more recent Eliasson, "Room For one colour," 1997; or Nauman's own "Yellow Room (Triangular)," 1973, as seen most recently at the Orange County Museum of Art's PST exhibition, "State of Mind." One can't help but also think of his "South America Triangle," 1981 as seen most recently at MOCA's own PST show "Under the Big Black Sun." Whatever the associations, Nauman reminds us of the inherent violence and unpleasant qualities of yellow light, particularly that which derives from such institutional fixtures as the ones he utilizes here within the context of yet another three-sided figure. I'll let you draw your own connections on the latter. I have my suspicions... Anecdotally perhaps, while I was standing inside the sculpture (one that you must crouch down to enter (hard not to think of Frank Lloyd Wright or Schindler gestures as well!)), a fellow viewer---clutching her newly pressed copy of the exhibition catalog, "Everything Loose Will Land"---declared that under the yellow light, her book disappeared. While I didn't verify this phenomenon, it did seem amusing though ultimately ancillary to the sculpture. It did seem to suggest a desire for something phenomenological and present rather than something so grounded a modest (read: rough around the edges) as this very sculpture. What was more to point, in my observation, was that it was nearly impossible at night to view the night sky above (as Turrell would invite) beyond the glaring yellow lights. I couldn't help but laugh with some kind of delight. Having spent a reasonable fifteen generous minutes in such a perceptually, hostile environment, I wandered away. Something about it's external darkness and internal brilliance left me satisfied and complete in a viewing. I suppose it has something to do with my preference for glow over glare. Somehow Nauman balances both with this one. Perhaps its advantage is its darkness, both ambient and surface? That being said, I wonder what will result from a subsequent daytime viewing? Stay tuned...