Untitled (To my friend De Wain Valentine)

In 1963, New York artist Dan Flavin began to experiment with neon tubes, that kind of light which illuminates supermarkets, office buildings and billboard signs with almost democratic equality. His installations—which he calls situations rather than sculptures—use varying tube lengths, colors, and positions. He confronts the anonymity of the industrial product by dedicating his works to well-known artists or personal friends, in this case DeWain Valentine. As in works by other minimal artists, this installation derives its tension from the contrast between clearly defined form and a complex sensual effect. The light is locked in the sculptural body of the tube and at the same time emanates from it. “Through its own glow the neon bulb pushes its own physical presence at the edge of invisibility. However, it never dissolves but maintains clear contours. The physical fact of the tube as a solid object prevails whether it is on or off.” Flavin succeeds in fusing an object made of color and light with the surrounding space and the body of the beholder into one aesthetic experience. The atmospheric light glides over both architecture and body with an almost tangible veil of color and constantly redefines them. “The light makes room and beholder visible to some extent. It creates both.”