Robert Irwin’s “Primaries and Secondaries”

“I can't go back to yesterday - because I was a different person then”
-Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

I went with friends to see the Robert Irwin exhibit, “Primaries and Secondaries,” at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego which, unfortunately, closes today. We went in expecting an interesting exhibit by a renowned contemporary artist and came out having experienced something quite different.

“Primaries and Secondaries” spans 50 years of Irwin’s work, including pieces which helped to define the West Coast “Light and Space Movement” and its concern with how our perceptions of things are altered by consciousness.

      

Light and Space, 2007

The exhibit is housed in a former baggage terminal for the Santa Fe Railroad. To install the show in a location that has served transition for decades could not have been more apt.

In begins chronologically, with paintings from Irwin’s abstract expressionist period in the 50’s and 60’s. Lots of impasto and gestural brushstrokes here. “Load up your brush or knife with several colors, apply this glob to the canvas, scrape ‘em down and see what you get.” Ribbons of blue, black and orange: I think Mr. Irwin was already enchanted by the possibilities.

Things begin to get interesting with one of his illusionistic acrylic discs: a concave shape attached to the wall behind which seems to be a sphere suspended in the air. As with Alice, having just stepped through the looking glass, you know at this point that the world is about to get “curiouser and curiouser .”

The weird thing is, Irwin performs his magic without any help from fancy computer generated effects or other trickery. His materials are just paint, plastic, wire and wood, no big deal, you’d think.

Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue, 2006

Irwin’s 5 x 5, is a set of huge floor-to-ceiling scrims, one set of five white and the other set black, which invite the viewer to travel in between them and view the constantly changing environment from within. Light and Space features a room with one wall covered with 115 fluorescent lights arranged in geometric patterns, inviting the viewer to contemplate the lights or groove on the shadows.

But the star of the show is undoubtedly his 2006 installation, “Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue,” a reference to Barnett Newman’s painting. Three huge acrylic panels, one in each color, are suspended over a matching panel on the floor. The resulting illusion brought on by gazing into the panels can cause a sensation of vertigo, as if one were staring into a clear, watery abyss, with your fellow viewers swimming in the depths. Although you can experience something of this effect on the surface of any window, believe me when I say that Irwin’s is much, much cooler.

After a while, you get it: “the look of reality depends on how you look at it.” Especially when you’ve fallen down Irwin’s rabbit hole.

For most art shows as rewarding as this one, I usually stop by the museum bookshop to pick up the guide so I can relive the exhibit long after I’ve returned home. Not this time. To apply the lessons of Irwin’s show, all my friends and I had to do was leave the exhibit and marvel at the other one beyond the doors.

Comments

[cheap sunglasses]

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