Simon Ungers
Tom Kinslow
T-House
5 x 5 x 10
(with light),
1996
Ludwig Wittgenstein
hallway in Vienna
|
simon ungers
at petra bungert
by Michael Brennan
Simon Ungers is an artist and architect who
has been working in the U.S. and Europe
since 1987. As an architect, he and his
partner Tom Kinslow received wide acclaim
for their T-House in Wilton, N.Y., in which
an elevated rectangular library was
cantilevered transversely across its
residential base. As an artist, he has
become known for site-specific
installations of large scale Minimalist
objects, usually referred to as "site
constructions" or "spatial constructions."
Two earlier works, Red Vertical, seen at
University at Buffalo Art Gallery in 1995,
and Red Slab in Space, installed at Sophia
Ungers gallery in Cologne in 1993, were
uniquely integrated into their setting and
strongly dealt with both the architectural
space and viewers' physical/psychological
interaction there. Ungers' work reflects
ideas ranging throughout 20th-century
modernism, from early Russian
Constructivism to the abstract sublime as
defined by Clement Greenberg via Kant and
Burke to the postmodernism of Jean-
Francois Lyotard as articulated in his
essay "The Sublime and the Avant-Garde" (in
The Inhuman).
Ungers' latest work, 5 x 5 x 10 (with
light), which was installed at Petra
Bungert Gallery earlier this summer, is a
particular and engaging experience. Ungers
has constructed a five-foot-square, ten-
foot-tall vertical chamber within the
gallery's tiny but beautiful main room with
its abraded floor and lovely walls of real
plaster. Within the center of the chamber,
and visible through its one open side, is a
thin nine-foot vertical rod of cool
fluorescent light. This light runs
silently, pure and pale, without any
annoying flicker or transformer hum,
consistent in its white-blue color from end
to end. The fluorescent tube is set into
the chamber's floor and ceiling, so that
the tube's ends and fixture are concealed.
The tube only appears circular at these two
terminal points; otherwise, its long
vertical expanse tends to optically flatten
out against the back chamber wall. This
effect is curious, because when you look at
the center of the light it functions like a
painting, but when you look at either end
you are clearly seeing sculpture. The
interior walls of the chamber catch the
cast light and glow against the brightness
of the burning gas bulb. On either side the
chamber is flanked by two narrow
passageways that lead to the windowed front
of the gallery. These passages are usually
filled with warm summer light that softly
frames 5 x 5 x 10 (with light).
The phenomenon of this piece, in spite of
the fluorescent tube, seems more closely
aligned with Barnett Newman than Dan
Flavin, in that it's an attempt to
construct meaning beyond its means, rather
than resting as a literal encryption of
meaningful forms. The color and scale of
5 x 5 x 10 (with light) recall Newman's The
Voice (1950), a white-on-white painting on
view at MoMA that has similar proportions.
Ungers' work wisely tempers any Abstract
Expressionist heroic content with a
literalness inherited from Minimalism and
the early Russian moderns. As Ungers
acknowledges the history of modernism and
moves on, he has created a tidy and
compelling century's-end test piece with
5 x 5 x 10 (with light) that raises the entire
reductivist program that extends from
Rodchenko to Newman, through Mies to Judd
and beyond. Here it is the whole modern
argument placed in a walk-in closet (with
an accompanying valise-sized edition).
With a work like this, it's easy to
overemphasize the light. For one thing,
it's electrified, and like any other light
sign is designed to get your attention.
White light itself is on metaphorical
overload in this culture, simultaneously
operating as a stand in for idealism, the
good, the divine and the transcendental
throughout the history of Western culture
from Homer to the Olympics. But the silent
success of 5 x 5 x 10 (with light) is the
enveloping chamber. The chamber carries the
full force of the work, because it mediates
and integrates not only the light but also
the structure of the gallery and the way a
viewer passes through the space. The work's
volume and proportions remind me of the
main hallway view from the Vienna house
designed by Ludwig Wittgenstein, especially
in the manner that both spaces squeeze the
light for a full-blown effect; the way
windows are "blown" in film when a
cameraman ruins an interior shot by using
too wide an aperture.
All in all I think 5 x 5 x 10 (with light)
is a wonderful installation that inhabits a
difficult space between the disciplines of
painting, sculpture and architecture,
between the literal and the metaphysical,
and deftly recovers what Habermas has
called "the unfinished business of
modernism" while addressing all those
nagging issues of spirituality in an anti-
utopian art and what that might mean at
this late date.
Simon Ungers at Petra Bungert Gallery, 225
Lafayette Street, Suite 303, NY, NY 10012
June 21-July 20, 1996
Michael Brennan is a New York painter who
writes on art.
|
