Anthony McCall
Anthony McCall
Let there be light: it is the medium that seems of the moment. Far before this moment, Anthony McCall began his work in the affiliated with the theory-favoring Formalists–Bruce Naumann, Wolf Vostell, and Nam Jun Paik, etc–but his work differs in its distinct transcendentalism more in line with James Turrell. Perhaps this is only an aesthetic consideration. Eschewing the clunky apparatuses of sixties/seventies televisuals that lends a heavily materialism to his contemporaries’ output, McCall describes light into shapes, finding its sculptural qualities when against the dark. These works’ simplicity exhibit a very primal fascination with the creative qualities of light itself: how it reveals forms and circumscribes forms with a burning outlines. Speaking of primality, it is apt that McCall’s earlier medium of choice was fire itself.
Albeit handicapped by the fickleness of photons and the limitations of past technology, McCall’s light sculptures cite future–now present–holograms and projection artwork; perhaps they foreshadow other innovations to come.
Sprüth Magers will be exhibiting the 1970s Solid-Light Works until January 25, 2014.
