SWITCH
The gallery lightings, substituted by those of my studio. SWITCH operates as a multi-layered spin hesitating between the visible and the invisible. At first sight SWITCH seems related to the work of the Light and Space artists such as Robert Irwin, James Turrell and more directly to the prominent work of Dan Flavin. However, Flavin commented on his early work (e.g. The Nominal Three) that he ‘intended rapid comprehension, get in and get out the situations’, suggesting there is no point to linger or contemplate the work. The fluorescent light fixtures being physical facts as part of a whole situation, objects mounted on the wall in a serial arrangement. Although some of his contemporaries including Donald Judd objected to this pictorial reading (and linked it to temporality for instance) Barnett Newman interpreted Flavin’s work as a continuation of painting with lights rather than paints.
Van Dessel’s work conveys hardly anything of the above; in SWITCH he takes another step further in the systematic reduction of the physicality of the work. By substituting the gallery lightings for those of his studio and vice versa, he sets up an open structure that renders possible a kind of swapping between levels of reality. It seems neither that the fixtures, nor the light is carrying the thought under investigation. Maybe it is the entropic condition comprised in this event that intensifies the peculiar (un)reality of this new state. Although some scars of the original (light) situation are visible, the almost abstraction of the tangible introduces discomfort and possibly provokes solipsistic conceptions. The generous act of Van Dessel to share the intimacy of his workplace with the viewer is a complex and challenging one. There is no potential for narrative or visual clues the viewer can rely on to comprehend the work as in the Bruce Nauman video installation described above. The viewer is thrown back onto his own foresight and imagination.
Extracted out: ‘(Di)stance Made Visible’ by Sylvie Vandenhoucke
