Installation view, Doug Wheeler at David Zwirner NYC (c)
American light and space artist Doug Wheeler’s latest installation mimics the feeling of flying inside Manhattan’s David Zwirner Gallery.
The site-specific piece is a light wall, and sees one of the gallery’s rooms drenched in milky light designed to evoke a blue sky on a cloudless day, and the flatness of the horizon. Wheeler has painted ceilings, walls and floors white to help reflect and diffuse light through space, alongside the use of nylon scrim and acrylic diffusers, and white neon UV lights.
‘When you’re flying, and you’re up there by yourself, and you’re dealing with this incredible vault all around you,’ Wheeler explains in a monograph to accompany the solo show – his fourth at the gallery. ‘I would think, “I want to bring that into an experience that other people [can] have.”‘
Wheeler has hidden wide-spectrum fluorescent tubes behind the drywall of the rear wall to create a glowing white rectangle which outlines the blue backdrop.
These elements heighten the effect, as visitors stand in the middle of the otherwise empty gallery space to experience the shifting ambience created by the spectacle.
‘Doug Wheeler’ runs until 21 March 2020 at 537 West 20th Street, New York
