Explore “Light, Space, and the Shape of Time” at the Albuquerque Museum

The community is invited to Albuquerque Museum’s first exhibition opening of the year: Light, Space, and the Shape of Time on view April 5 through July 20. It is rooted in the Light and Space art movement that took shape in Southern California in the early 1960s. Pushing back against other movements of their time, these artists worked with everyday materials to create experiences that embodied a different understanding of our physical environment.

From colorful sheets of hardened resin and acrylic, to mercurial glass sculptures, to neon and fluorescent lights pointing nowhere and to nothing, these works draw our attention to the transcendent play of shadow, atmosphere, surface, and texture as essential facets of the world, even at its most understated.

Featured artists are Peter Alexander; Neal Ambrose-Smith (Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation of Montana); LaTurbo Avedon; Larry Bell; Barbara Bock; Dan Flavin; Jenny Holzer; Robert Irwin; Florence Miller Pierce; August Muth; Michael Namingha (Tewa/Hopi); Soo Sunny Park; Helen Pashgian; James Turrell; Leo Villareal; and Kumi Yamashita.

“The Albuquerque Museum is a space where families can explore and discover the boundless world of art and artists,” said Mayor Tim Keller. “We invite visitors of all ages to experience the creativity of different artistic movements while celebrating perspectives of diverse artists.”

With many of the forerunners of the Light and Space movement represented, and incorporating significant loans from the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation, this exhibition underscores the ongoing influence and progression of these ideas through two successive generations of artists.

“This exhibition brings to bear recent break-throughs in electrical engineering and optical and material physics, particularly by women, Latino, Asian American, and Indigenous artists,” William Gassaway, the museum’s assistant curator of art, said. “In this way, Light, Space, and the Shape of Time brings the conversation into the contemporary moment and acknowledges the specific and profound impact that New Mexico has had on artists from around the country.”

Sampling of Works

A centerpiece of the exhibition is The Cat, 1981, an iconic work by Taos-based artist Larry Bell. A pillar of the Light and Space movement, Bell is known for his revolutionary approach to glass sculpture. The Cat consists of 12 floating pieces of solid glass, which affect viewers’ perception, emphasizing the relationship between perceived versus physical realities. “His pieces resonate with ethereal beauty. Individual works created of technically complex elements that might be explained on one level in purely technical or scientific language come across as sensuous and vibrantly romantic,” said the late artist Douglas Kent Hall.

Soo Sunny Park’s Unwoven Light, 2013, is a large-scale, immersive installation that transforms the gallery space into a shimmering world of refracted light and brilliant color. Made of chainlink fence, Plexiglass, and natural and artificial light, the work is suspended from the ceiling and arranged in a twisting flow of abstract form. Park says, “This piece explores light’s potential as a structural element in sculpture. The woven form of a chainlink fence, fitted with diamond tiles, unweaves the light.” As with other works in the exhibition, each visitor's experience of Unwoven Light is unique, depending on ambient factors in the gallery, like noise and breath, the precise angle of viewing, and even the number of people in the gallery.

Abstract in Your Home, 2009, by Neal Ambrose-Smith (Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation of Montana) is a neon installation exploring concepts of home, abstraction, and lived cultural experiences. He describes a teepee as a perfectly engineered structure that is incredibly versatile, sturdy, and able to withstand the harsh climate of the Great Plains. It also represents his Indigenous culture and demonstrates how the idea of home may be different depending on time and place, while also embodying universal ideas of shelter, familiarity, traditions, and family.

Two large-scale, untitled sculptural light installations by internationally renowned artist Dan Flavin will figure prominently in the exhibition. As one of the seminal artists in the establishment of installation art, Flavin redefined the relationship between art and space by rejecting any sense of overarching symbolism in his work, instead emphasizing the works’ ordinary materials—fluorescent light, metal frames, and circuitry. “It is what it is, and it ain’t nothin’ else,” he once said of his work. “Everything is clearly, openly, plainly delivered.”

This exhibition is made possible in part by the Albuquerque Museum Foundation.