David Zwirner is pleased to announce an exhibition of works by Dan Flavin (1933–1996) at the gallery’s 34 East 69th Street location in New York. Presented in adjacent rooms of the Upper East Side townhouse, the works on view recreate two groundbreaking exhibitions that Flavin mounted in 1967 at New York’s Kornblee Gallery, then located at the nearby and architecturally similar 58 East 79th Street.
In one gallery, a series of six vertically oriented works in cool white light, each varying slightly from one another, punctuate the space, making a subtle incursion into the existing architecture; whereas in the opposite gallery a work composed of six diagonals dramatically washes the space in green light. Made only a few years after Flavin began working with commercially available fluorescent lamps, these installations (or “situations,” as the artist preferred to call them) provide insight into Flavin’s distinct strategy for conceptualizing, activating, and transforming space with light and color. The exhibition will be supplemented by the artist’s preparatory drawings as well as other archival materials documenting these early shows.
A concurrent exhibition, Dan Flavin: colored fluorescent light, will be on view at the gallery’s London location.