Dan Flavin’s Grins on View at David Zwirner

Description

Hosting the first solo exhibition of Dan Flavin’s work in Greater China, David Zwirner presents the artist’s signature Grids, a series he began creating in 1976.

Born in New York, the artist produced a singularly consistent and prodigious body of work using commercially available fluorescent lamps to create installations of light and color.  

The exhibition includes several recreations of the ways Flavin installed the grids in significant exhibitions during his lifetime, alongside loans from major public collections and the Estate of Dan Flavin. Installed in the corner of a room, the works project a blend of colours both outward towards the viewer and inward into the corner, drawing attention to the architectural qualities of the space.

Highlights include Flavin’s first grid works, “untitled (for Mary Ann and Hal with fondest regards) 1 and 2” (both 1976), two eight-foot-square constructions composed of five pink lamps facing one direction and five green lamps facing the other in inverse configurations. Also on view is “untitled (for you, Leo, in long respect and affection) 2”, an eight-foot grid created in 1977 that demonstrates the artist’s increasingly experimental approach to colour.