Dan Flavin's lightbulbs

7/23/06

A series of six rooms containing pairs of oblique hallways, lit with different-color fluorescent bulbs. I keep going back and forth on whether I liked this piece or not: the mechanistic arrangement of the colors and bulbs — now they’re in the middle of the hall. Now they’re at each end. Now there’s this pair of colors. Now the other. Now we’ll start mixing them up. Woo hoo — was pretty dull. Having to go outside to get from one room to the next also kind of interrupted the experience. But standing inside one of the halls until your eyes adjust, watching the room slowly turn white again, then moving to the next and seeing the colors turn vivid, was a nice effect.

Photo of Dan Flavin's lightbulbs