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| Laddie John Dill, Image Courtesy of the Gallery |
On Wednesday May 8th, 2013 from 6 to 9PM, Nyehaus Gallery in Manhattan will inaugurate Laddie John Dill's exhibition entitled "Elementary," an installation of the artist's famous colored sections of glass tubing named "Light Sentences."
For more than four decades, Dill, a central figure in the California Light and Space movement, has been working with the long hollow glass cylinders that he fills with gases such as argon, neon, helium or xenon of varying degrees and intensities which are lightened by gas and ignited by electricity.
In the selection of his materials, the Venice-based artist says that he has been influenced by "Robert Rauschenberg, Keith Sonnier, Robert Smithson, Dennis Oppenheim, and Robert Irwin, who were working with earth materials, light, and space as an alternative to easel painting.”
In past displays of Dill's works, the tubes were affixed to the wall with industrial hardware with the wiring prominently displayed as an artifact of process and a “contained radiance” splashing the wall surrounding the work with all sorts of distorted geometries.
At Nyehaus, the "Light Sentences" are incased in individual containers and recessed into the wall and he has also created dioramas: stand alone miniature sculptures of what could easily be imagined as large-scale installations.
The centerpiece, is a work that is a functioning fountain, a crucial element in bringing the atmospheres of Southern California to New York City. Since the late 60's, Dill has been creating landscapes from sand, light and glass.
When the sheets of glass make contact with gas-illuminated tubes hidden beneath, the sand, lights the edges of the glass, creating a fiber optic luminance.