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orbitalpavilion · 5 months

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Gifs of Philippe Parreno’s glow-in-the-dark poster art. Every 10 seconds, the lights switch on and off. See all of the posters here. In the gallery space, lights switch on and off periodically; the hidden works only appear when the lights switch off, but as with all glow-in-the-dark materials, the phosphorescence fades in a few moments.

While there are plenty of artworks which explore the boundaries between darkness and light, I can think of very few which use glow-in-the-dark as a way of conceptualizing memory, disappearance, unrealized aspirations, and the like. Significantly, Parreno uses images from previously abandoned and aborted works; they represent the past, its failures, and its unachieved goals. But more than this, the act of waiting for the room light to charge the phosphors forces the spectator to emotionally charge the posters (which appear blank in the light) with expectation and desire. When the lights switch off and the desire to see is instantly fulfilled, some gallery visitors might experience an anticlimax, since the darkness reveals images which the artist found disappointing and discarded. But even if we are not struck by their strange monochromatic glow, as they fade, their ephemerality makes them precious and desirable again. They’re all we have, and as time causes them to disappear into memory, we wish they would stick around longer. Few works so dynamically explore cathection and desire as these, which lead the spectator along a path of experiencing love and loss via a straightforward use of light, photography, and photoluminescence.

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orbitalpavilion · 5 months

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