Above: Anthony McCall, Solid Light, installation view,
Pioneer Works, New York, 2018
“It was very, very peaceful and calming. It was very, very like almost otherworldly in the experience. This isn’t the modern world we live in today. It could be somewhere in a far-off land, in a galaxy far, far away. Somewhere just not here. It didn’t feel like I live here in New York on just a normal Saturday. It felt calming, it felt womblike, it felt really like there was something there that just calm you and make you think about everything, think about life, think about, just think about.”
Twelve-year-old girl in the Solid Light works of Anthony McCall
Somehow it’s interesting to observe that what’s closest to us is often so close that we can’t even perceive it. In a way, it’s invisible, intangible. As if we had to travel to find it somewhere else, as if it wasn’t available to us right here, right now, as the young girl describes it above – "It didn't feel like I live here in New York on just a normal Saturday."
It’s significant that McCall’s very first works were created in the euphoric, melancholy, uncertain transitional period of the early 1970s and that we are currently undergoing a fundamental societal change again, which allows a distinction to be made between a “before” and an “after”. In the 1970s, it manifested itself in the question of how art could continue after Pop Art and Andy Warhol, and how the flood of images emanating from television, film and magazines, which increasingly affected our lives and consciousness, could be processed. Today we stand on the threshold of a new dominion, becoming the subject of the powerful image machine that is the Internet and an economic upheaval of universal effect, and at the same time of economic and humanistic questions, all of which require a fundamental rethinking.
In short: it's about becoming aware.
In his 1997 book on logic entitled “Laws of form”, mathematician George Spencer Brown points out that everything that is expressed, is expressed in a certain “form”. The form is the key.
In McCall’s work, the “form” becomes an embodied reality. Only when we come into contact with it can we come into contact with the immediacy of the now, can we become aware of being and the ultimate realization: There is no “out there”, “out there”. Still, we have to leave our role as passive spectators and understand that we have to take the courageous step “in”. Or, as McCall’s artist colleague Richard Serra would say: “Postcards don’t tell”. McCall’s works are – beside film, light, sculpture, drawing, space and time – one thing above all: directly felt experience.
By interacting with the work, we as a visitor can become aware of human modes of existence, structures and the relationship between the senses through and with the work and one and another. It can thereby – although never intended – lead to a deeper understanding, transformation and realization.
I was amazed when I was talking with this young girl who was visiting Anthony McCall’s exhibition at Pioneer Works in New York with her family. She didn’t hesitate for a moment as the words came out of her mouth clearly, without a single 'hm', 'well'. So fresh, so eloquent, and so aware. Yes, you don’t have to travel far! A split second can offer us a complete shift in perception. Art can be such a birthplace of new realities, so it can be a piece of music or a poem – really any creation or form of expression that embodies and allows a present encounter.
I didn’t have to explain anything to this girl from the point of view of conventional art history. In the Solid Light, in which there is nothing else to perceive other than what is – what one is in the light, as the light and its shadow, she had a moment of remembrance of the underlying phenomenon of existence, which can only be perceived through and in form. And as such, she reminded me in turn. This is how it works, over and over again. This is how we all relate to each other and are always connected in a world in which we only falsely perceive ourselves as separate from each other.
If only we open ourselves to an approach in art, education and science that frees itself from preconceived, old believes and judgements and allows for an experience that is felt in oneself through the body, directly and intimately, and with a permission to simply be with it too, we will have taken a great step into the future. In the words of Nikola Tesla: “The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all previous centuries of its existence.”
The children of today are the light bearers of the future. And the art of the now is one that brings this kind of “non-physical” layer to manifestation. In case of of Anthony McCall’s work, this takes the form of what could be called a great paradox: Solid Light. But ultimately, paradox itself is the most genuine quality of all life. No wonder, then, that you can feel so alive and at the same time so peaceful and calm in your own play with the work. Otherworldly and present at the same time! One in all.
Onward!
Love,
Tina
For more information on the artist please visit: anthonymccall.com
TINA GUTHKNECHT