Light Installations at Tate Modern

Anthony McCall, Face to Face, 2013

There are some amazing light works currently on display at Tate Modern. I ventured down to the Southbank to see Anthony McCall's Solid Light exhibition and was pleasantly surprised to find other super interesting work in the cavernous ground floor tanks of the Natalie Bell building. 

I have long been a fan of Anthony McCall's Light Describing a Cone (1973) as it was one of the first and purest iterations of light as a medium. In the vein of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, McCall uses cinema to create light installations. Animated line drawings are projected as a circle in the process of closing, or a shape forming over approximately 30 minutes. A haze machine produces an artificial mist, filling the lines created by the throw of the image, making them look like three-dimensional solid objects. Thus a cone, for example, appears as the film progresses. Added to this is the engagement of the museum visitor who is drawn to interrupt the light projections with fingers, hands, heads, manipulating and transforming solid light sculptures into three dimensional abstractions. 

The uniqueness of the works is their invitation to look from different angles. Visitors can watch the line forming a shape on a scrim or screen opposite the projector, in front of them. Or, they can look into the projector lens to see the line forming on the film strip, and equally, interact with the work as a three-dimensional sculpture. Indeed, the interaction of visitors adds a layer of animation that makes the works performative, not simply art works to look at. On the day I visited Tate Modern, children sat in front of the beam to split it, adults held their spectacles in front of the beam to blur the lines of the shape being projected. Still other people huddled under the tent-like mist, looking as if they were protected from the world. Effectively, once visitors engaged, bringing body and light projection together, the works shifted from art works to be looked at to a playground of light to be revelled in. 

I have to admit, while the interactive aspect was fun to experience, the transfer of McCall's work to digital left the artistic magic a little wanting. A glitch in one projection resulted in a very disappointing broken circle. The absence of the whir of the projector and the immediacy of light projected film — surely a significant element in the original installations — made the exhibition somewhat gimmicky.

Paul Maheke, Levant, 2018

Downstairs, Paul Maheke's Levant was among a series of rooms housing light installations. Maheke's video shows dancer/choreographer Ligia Lewis dressed in black against a black background, her body barely visible. The text accompanying the video mentioned Maheke's inspiration by theorists such as Edouard Glissant and Audre Lorde. I find the notion of the power of invisibility and disappearance to be compelling. It is a visual language which enables black people to evade capture and commodification because they cannot be seen or located. Together with the electronic music of Nkisi (Melika Ngombe Kolongo), Maheke's video of the spectre-like Lewis dancing produces an image of searching and elusiveness. Apparently Maheke filmed Lewis while wearing a headlight and dancing with her. This process is made visible through a shaky and constantly moving image, creating an effect of uncertainty, anxiety, and slipperiness to the figure. 

Felix Gonzales-Torres, Untitled (March 5th) #2, 1991

Also downstairs in the tanks is a very touching work by Felix Gonzales-Torres. His works are always moving because of the connection they have to his deceased boyfriend who is never represented, but always present. In this untitled piece, the inclusion of the lover's date of death in the title, clearly reminds us of his significance. Twin light bulbs illuminate a vault-like space, gently reminding us of the two coming together as one, and yet, the ongoing possibility that one of the lights might go out at any moment. When this happens, the light cast is halved, showing the loss and incompletion of the one without the other. Inside a darkened, vault-like space, the warm light creates an emotional piece thanks to all of its associations.