Inside the Gallery Show Built Entirely From Borrowed Light
By Priya Nakamura
There are no wall labels. There is no didactic panel by the door. There is a room, and there is neon, and the argument is left to the two of them.
Shows like this one tend to be remembered for a single room, and the argument about whether the rest earned it starts on the second weekend.
Priya Nakamura, who spent opening night walking the room with the artist, has been close to it from the start.
The decision
The installation uses 340 metres of argon and neon tube, bent by hand over eleven weeks, and not one metre of it is switched on at full output.
Budget was fixed before the brief was finished, which is the wrong order and, everyone involved agrees, the usual one.
The absence of labels is a decision the gallery has taken heat for, and it is holding.
Light is the only material here that does not need a plinth.
the artist
In practice
The steel is borrowed from a scaffolding contractor and goes back the week the show closes, which is why nothing is welded.
The measure will be whether anything changes afterwards, in the collection or the programme, rather than in the press release.
The first week brought the kind of attention nobody plans for, and the second brought the criticism that actually changed something.
They are careful about what they claim. Two of the decisions that look deliberate now were, by their own account, the only option left by the time anyone noticed.
What comes next
Open daily until the end of the month. Go late, when the room is dark enough to earn it.
