In another light - fluorescent light art, Dan Flavin, Dia Center for the Arts, Guggenheim Museum, PaceWildenstein, New York, New York

Art in America, June, 1996 by Richard Kalina

The movement out into physical and optical space - the architectural side of Flavin's work - is seen to greatest effect in larger-scale installations. (ln contrast, the single diagonal tube in the uptown Guggenheim's big abstraction show looked rather forlorn, as if it were fighting a losing battle against the slope of the museum's ramp.) In a big Flavin installation the air seems suffused with light and color, almost as if one could breathe it. You have a sense of anticipation and of being led along as light spills out the doorway of an adjacent room. Shadows cut floors and walls, corners dissolved forms are blurred and doubled on polished floors: ceiling beams seem spray painted@ and small architectural details - the space between two radiator strips, for example - are highlighted with the most complex blend of colors. As you look, the sculptures expand. How big are they, really - their listed dimensions or the area encompassed by their throw of light@ Does the room have other sources of illumination? In that case things are different again.

At Dia, the new permanent installation gives a starkly utilitarian stairwell a sense of drama and mystery. Tubes running up the comer (blue on the two lower floors, green on the two upper) turn brick walls craggy and painted walls glassy, functioning as a radiant armature for the turnings of the stairs. In Flavin's installations the entire space that houses them is subtly recon-figured. The modifications feel as permanent as any architectural renovation, but to undo them, all you have to do is throw a switch.

Minimalism has had great staying power. In sculpture, especially, it has been something that artists (and critics) have had to deal with in their practice. You may be for it or against it, but it is difficult indeed not to take it into account. The best of classic Minimalism has continued to present a very good case for itself. Dan Flavin's work is in many ways paradigmatic. While remaining true to its principles, it has continued to grow in complexity, both of effect and interpretation. In the process, somehow, it has taken on a richer, almost affective character.

Classic Minimalism depends upon - and, in a sense, embodies - a built-in rigidity, a stubborn insistence on the factual and the phenomenological. Implicit in this esthetic is a desire for control that has led most Minimalist artists (stella is an exception) to keep strict rein on their work's formal variables. While this rectitude might seem to be an impediment to long-term development - certainly it would be anathema to Picasso or Matisse - it has for the most part served the Minimalists Well. By maintaining a built-in limit to formal variation, the Minimalists have preempted temptation, particularly the temptation to devolve to the overtly personal. The result is an unusually firm grasp of the rules, the better (sometimes) to break them. In fact, the analytic quality of Minimalist art, its seeming clarity of method and intention, actually increases its potential for ambiguity. Minimalism's facets have been sharply defined from the outset, and, over time, inherent contradictions and instabilities establish themselves as reliable generators of interpretational and perceptual complexity. Flavin's work continues to have deep resonance. It still "is what it is" - in the proper Minimalist sense - but then to" be, is, after all, a very tricky verb. *