Light Show

There's a statement in the introductory text to the Hayward Gallery's new Light Show that seems little more than a simple truism: "vision is the least reliable of the senses." However, I've lately been re-reading Bertrand Russell's An Outline of Philosophy, in which he quite convincingly argues the opposite position: that in fact, many of the developments which led to clearer understanding of concepts in modern physics were primarily the result of ideas derived through sight:

"As a matter of fact, if modern physics is to be believed, sight, prudently employed, gives us a more delicate knowledge concerning objects than touch can ever do. Touch, as compared with sight, is gross and massive. We can photograph the path of an individual electron. We perceive colours, which indicate the changes happening in atoms. We can see faint stars even though the energy of the light that reaches us from them is inconceivably minute. Sight may deceive the unwary more than touch, but for accurate scientific knowledge it is incomparably superior to any of the other senses."

Of course, when talking of art exhibitions in public galleries, the irony of all this — never mind that Russell is talking about physics, not art; light is light, after all, whether art or photons — discussion of the relative merits of sight versus touch is that in art galleries you often aren't allowed to touch anything at all, and must rely entirely on sight for deduction and interpretation.

But this is all much of a muchness as regards Light Show, an exhibition featuring 22 artists, the majority of which featured here were born between 1923-1968, with only three born in the 70s and one in the 80s. Light Show isn't necessarily intended as a celebration of the old grandees of light art, though they're all present and correct with works by Dan Flavin, James Turrell, Anthony McCall and Carlos Cruz-Diez. The presence of younger artists like Katie Paterson and Conrad Shawcross, to the exclusion of many other contemporary artists who trade in light, can in fact be explained by the exhibition guide, which mentions that the works have been selected for their exploration of how artificial light can be used to create a sense of sculptural space that plays with human perceptual responses.

Judging the exhibition by its own criteria, the works which are the most enjoyable to experience, if not necessarily the most thought-provoking, are indeed those which create or define a sense of space and then use various illusions to play with the space created by the light. Turrell is a master of this phenomenon, twisting the brain's ability to properly perceive the space created, because of the way the light is deployed. The classic Turrell trick is to use perspective to make the brain think the eyes are seeing a flat-space, like a light box on a wall. It's only with prior knowledge of the trick, or in putting your arm through the opening, that you finally realise the light box isn't a light box, but a hole in the wall filled with dense, space-making light. In Light Show, Wedgeworks, an early piece made in 1974, uses light to seemingly divide the space into a number of wedge shapes. They seem solid, like screens angled between the fixed walls, but walk through the light (though the gallery attendants frown upon such behaviour, as it ruins the illusion) and the "trick" is revealed. Wedgeworks has its merits, and stands out as a particularly strong piece among a number of weaker works in the exhibition, but it isn't half as masterful as some of Turrell's more recent works, particularly Dhatu, exhibited in 2010 at London's Gagosian Gallery.

Similarly, Anthony McCall has picked up on the idea of light as having space-making properties and used it to great effect. An animated computer script of a line drawing morphing in and out of various shapes is projected onto a wall and a light mist fills out the projected light, rendering it almost solid. The work is captivating not because of the bright beam of light nor because of the moving lines of the animation on the screen, but because the mist turns the light itself into a slowly evolving sculpture. If you stand right back by the light's source, the projector, the curves and sharp angles of light are so clearly defined, it looks as if it's being carved on the spot by some invisible Pygmalion.

Leo Villareal's Cylinder II (2012) opens the show and is the first thing you see when entering the gallery. The large, weeping-willow like structure of reflective hanging rods supports nearly 20,000 LED lights and is mesmerising and pointless at the same time. It's sort of nice to look at, but feels like something that might stand in the entrance lobby of a resort in Las Vegas. David Batchelor's Magic Hour (2004/2007), on the other hand, was supposedly inspired by the incessant glow of light that hangs over the Vegas strip at night. Composed of different shapes and sizes of found light boxes, re-fitted with various coloured panels, it's a lovely thing to look at, but it rather misses the brief of using light to make space or mess with perception.

Bill Culbert's Bulb Box Reflection (1975) doesn't, on first look, appear to be more than a light bulb reflected in a mirror. Look again, though, and the bulb in front of you is dead, while the one reflected in the mirror glows brightly back. Curioser and cruiser. Another light-bulb work, Light bulb to simulate moonlight (2008) is by Katie Paterson, the youngest artist of the bunch, and part of a larger body of work to do with outer space. A simple but effective piece, Paterson's bulb inverts the function of an incandescent "daylight" bulb to replicate the light emitted by a full moon — not exactly practical, but certainly atmospheric. Works by Ceal Floyer, Fischli and Weiss, Brigitte Kowanz, Philippe Parreno and Nancy Holt feel like tossed-off one-liners among the other works that not only use light to create interesting space, but to create interesting space which holds and sustains interest.

In the exhibition's final room, 27 different fountains and a rig of strobe lighting create a neat effect in Olafur Eliasson's Model for a timeless garden (2011). The strobe lights give the illusion that each drop of water spraying from the fountains is frozen in mid-air, an illusion created by the pump's periodic nature. The trick in perception isn't really in Eliasson's piece — with the strobe lighting and the frozen droplets — what he's really doing is exposing the way the fountain actually works. The water in the fountains isn't coming out in a continuous stream. Rather, it's pumped out in droplets, but because each droplet is nearly identical to the one which proceeds it, our eyes perceive the droplets as a continuous stream. But when the strobe light is applied, our eyes perceive the droplets moving slowly, individually, rather than falling quickly in a continuous stream. Because Light Show is an art exhibition, not a science fair, these explanations aren't always made readily available to viewers. But when it comes to light and art and perception, half of the fun is in figuring out the trick for yourself. Or in not figuring it out and enjoying it anyway. Crystal Bennes (@crystalbennes)

Through 28 April 2013
Light Show
Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre
Belvedere Road, London