The Light Fantastic: Light and Space

Perception gets turned upside down in Robert Irwin’s latest installation for the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. To make Light and Space, the local artist—a former painter who also designed the gardens of L.A.’s famed Getty Center—mounted 2- and 4-foot colorless fluorescent tubes on the walls of an expansive gallery space in downtown’s Jacobs Building. Developed while Irwin served as artist-in-residence for the MCASD in 2007, the piece creates a juxtaposition of light, empty space, and form. “It’s stimulation for the senses,” says Jill Dawsey, MCASD associate curator. “It increases your awareness of your physical environment and how we perceive the world.”

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Robert Irwin installation at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego

Photo by Philipp Scholz Rittermann