ROBERT IRWIN: CALIFORNIA UGHT

摘要

CALIFORNIAN ARTIST Robert Irwin's career has charted a formidable evolution over the past five decades. From an early dalliance in the late 1950s with Abstract Expressionism, he has progressed towards an art form without frames and gallery walls, onewhich has dispensed with any form of direct representational activity and which seeks to challenge the very experience of the artistic encounter. Irwin's work in the 1970s became loosely grouped with Californians such as James Turrell, Maria Nordman andLarry Bell, who all adopted light and space as the basic material of their practice. Irwin utilised thin textile scrims stretched across rooms to create subtle interactions of light and shade, suggesting visually deceptive volumes of space. Drawing uponthe phenomenological philosophy of Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the works generated shifts of perception, throwing the position of the viewer into question by challenging their assumptions about appearance, meaning and truth.