Suprasensorial

Disposable bathing suits needed: at the Hirshhorn Museum, Suprasensorial coaxes viewers to dive in.

"Unlike most works of art—" the wall text notes: "please touch." Welcome to the adult playground of Suprasensorial: Experiments in Light, Color and Space, currently on view at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC. As the first exhibition to place pioneering Latin American artists within the international canon of those working in light and space, Suprasensorial sheds new light on a movement that North Americans often peg to have begun in the 1960s and 1970s with figures like Robert Irwin, James Turrell and Doug Wheeler. Here, works ranging from 1951-1974 reveal that the Venezuelan artists Carlos Cruz-Diez and Jesús Rafael Soto, as well as Argentina's Lucio Fontana and Julio Le Parc and Brazil's Hélio Oiticica were all using light, color and space as tools to both open experience and destabilize the conventions of how we relate to art. Coined by Oiticica to describe multimedia environments that activate spaces and dynamically engage viewers, the "suprasensorial" is as much about participation as presentation: with each work the real object is the experience.

The exhibition begins quietly with Le Parc's 1962 Light in Movement, the most contemplative work in the show. Viewers enter a dusky semi-circular room with its flat side covered in mirrors and its curved side painted white. Overhead, against the mirrors, a panel of silvery metal squares dangle, brightly illuminated by a pair of spotlights. The resulting scattered reflections turn this simple interior into a hypnotic circular pool of rippling light. The softness of Le Parc's aqueous world cedes quickly to the steely lure of Chromosaturation, Cruz-Diez' 1965 installation, often proclaimed the standout in the show. Here, viewers explore three not-quite separate rooms, each bathed by fluorescent tubes wrapped in a single hue: red, blue or green.

Top: <em>Blue Penetrable Bill</em> by Jesús Rafael Soto. Above: Lucio Fontana, <em>Neon Structure for the IX Trienniale of Milan,</em> 1951 — Top: *Blue Penetrable Bill* by Jesús Rafael Soto. Above: Lucio Fontana, *Neon Structure for the IX Trienniale of Milan,* 1951

Whether dampened by seasonal associations or a recent opportunity to behold Doug Wheeler's exquisite light space SA MI 75 DZ NY 12 in New York's David Zwirner gallery, this viewer's experience of Chromosaturation, found it less akin to the Washington Post's poetic allusion of "wandering around inside a rainbow" and more reminiscent of being dipped in vinegary vats of Easter egg dye. Acidity notwithstanding, Cruz-Diez' work marks the first point within the show that the centrality of not only the personal but also the communal experience becomes apparent. This holds true for Soto's Blue Penetrable BBL, the frequent poster child of the exhibition, in which the viewer is immersed in yet another waterless watery environment, this time composed of thousands of bright blue nylon cords dangling from a monumental steel frame: part inverted swimming pool, part car wash. Here, half the delight lies in witnessing others awash in the sea of strings.

Julio Le Parc's 1962 <em>Light in Movement</em> is the most contemplative work in the show — Julio Le Parc's 1962 *Light in Movement* is the most contemplative work in the show

It is a shame that the real watery environment, a kind of psychedelic swimming pool that was included in the original mounting of this show at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, is here absent. Hélio Oiticica's 1973 collaboration with filmmaker Neville D'Almeida produced Cosmococas, a series of cinematic installations inspired by cocaine fueled visions. Ringed with blue light and flanked by projected images of John Cage's musical book, Notations, strewn with cocaine and various drug paraphernalia, the pool came replete with complimentary towels, changing rooms and disposable bathing suits available for purchase in the bookstore. Oiticica's pool pushed the envelope of the fully immersive experience in a manner absent from the current incarnation of the show.

While the overall affect of Suprasensorial is more that of a superficial tickling of the senses, with any luck it will push future curators and viewers alike to don their disposable suits and dive into the deep end

In <em>Light in Movement</em>, viewers enter a dusky semi-circular room with its flat side covered in mirrors and its curved side painted white. Overhead, against the mirrors, a panel of silvery metal squares dangle, brightly illuminated by a pair of spotlights. The resulting scattered reflections turn this simple interior into a hypnotic circular pool of rippling light — In *Light in Movement*, viewers enter a dusky semi-circular room with its flat side covered in mirrors and its curved side painted white. Overhead, against the mirrors, a panel of silvery metal squares dangle, brightly illuminated by a pair of spotlights. The resulting scattered reflections turn this simple interior into a hypnotic circular pool of rippling light

While one is more apt to overlook flaws when having fun, the exhibition has several notable shortcomings. Oiticica's remaining work, a loungey installation of floor cushions with more drug infused projections and a stoner-rock soundtrack, is immersive but out of place. Meanwhile Fontana's 1951 Neon Structure for the IX Trienniale of Milan, the dramatic opener in Los Angeles, here finds itself a dislocated appendage in a cramped feeling space at the top of the escalator bank. Though the installation decision is apparently intended to reflect its original display over a staircase, the resulting experience seems untethered and out of context. Meanwhile, minimal texts within the show afford ample space for the viewer to foreground their own experience, yet leave the political undertones of the work in the shadows.

Hélio Oiticica's 1973 collaboration with filmmaker Neville D'Almeida produced <em>Cosmococas</em> — Hélio Oiticica's 1973 collaboration with filmmaker Neville D'Almeida produced *Cosmococas*

"These artists were trying to make art more democratic and less elitist," notes the exhibition's senior curator, Alma Ruiz. Though these artists sought to create work that required no connoisseurship, in presenting their work — now unhinged from its original cultural and temporal context — without this political ballast, the light too often becomes lightweight. Luckily, a beautifully designed bilingual catalog, in which two texts are superimposed in complimentary colors that only become distinguishable through the overlay of accompanying colored acetates, helps to pick up where the exhibition leaves off and may prove its most lasting contribution.

Carlos Cruz-Diez, <em>Chromosaturation</em> installation — Carlos Cruz-Diez, *Chromosaturation* installation

Nevertheless, Suprasensorial must be recognized to have chosen its moment well. A look at the current exhibition landscape of New York City alone — from the 2012 Whitney Biennial's inaugural inclusion of music, dance, theater and film, to MoMA's recent sold-out retrospective of the German electronic musicians Kraftwerk, and the New Museum's recent Carsten Höller survey in which viewers signed a waiver to experience an 102-foot corkscrew slide, a sensory-deprivation tank and an installation of flashing lights designed to make you hallucinate — it is clear that today's museums are interested in the immersive social experience exemplified in these Latin American artists' work. "Oiticica talked a lot about pushing the viewer to become an active participant, with the hope that the transformation would happen not just in the arts but in everyday life," notes Ruiz. While the overall affect of Hirshhorn's Suprasensorial is more that of a superficial tickling of the senses — a mere skimming of the surface of what these artists had to offer — with any luck it will push future curators and viewers alike to don their disposable suits and dive into the deep end.

Suprasensorial

Disposable bathing suits needed: at the Hirshhorn Museum, Suprasensorial coaxes viewers to dive in.

Latest on Art

Latest on Domus