Light Sculptures Set a Gallery Aglow in Technicolor

Artist James Clar channels Cronenberg, Irwin, and Flavin.

This article was originally published on November 13, 2014 but we think it still rocks!

In the vein of Dan Flavin and James Turrell, artist James Clar creates minimalist light sculptures that illuminate the storied shift from traditional mediums to artificial lighting. SEEK, an exhibition at the Carroll/Fletcher in London, finds the artist creating wall compositions, images, and video art that explore the democratization of time and space by attempting to make visible the unseen.

The show’s press release explains, “Clar aims to reveal the multiple possibilities engendered by the play between strange and disparate environments of the real and unreal.” In the past, Clar has created artworks made from brain waves and from the ebb and flow of movement through the Frankfurt airport, and built tube light wall pieces that spell out entire words.

Blue Star

Says Clar, ”Technology and social media transport us to alternate realities. They allow us to pause, rewind and overlap time.” SEEK features several pieces that introduce social commentary through new media, including eXistenz is Paused, a multimedia series that uses an EEG sensor to record the brain waves of a laptop playing a looped clip from David Cronenberg’s 1999 film, eXistenZ; Rain Under Lamppost, an animated projection of rain that “hints at volumetric space and the interstices between cartoon and reality”; and Dance Therapy, a 20-minute video installation showing footage of breakdancers, their heads stabilized in post-production so it looks like they explode in the light of a disco ball. Space Is A Hologram encourages viewers to imagine “a 3D reality experience as conjured from a 2D hologram.”

Below, check out images from SEEK: