INFERNO

KEITH SONNIER – LIGHT WORKS, 1968 TO 2017 – Galleria Fumagalli Milan – Opening: Thursday 27 September from 6.30 pm – 28 September to 19 December, 2018.

The exhibition documents the evolution of the Keith Sonnier’s creative process from the first historical pieces from 1968 to his recent work.

Galleria Fumagalli announces the first solo exhibition of American artist Keith Sonnier, represented exclusively in Italy by the gallery since February 2018. The exhibition documents the evolution of the artist’s creative process from the first historical pieces from 1968 to his recent work.

Keith Sonnier is among the first and most significant representatives of a generation of artists who pioneered a radical approach to sculpture. Since the late 1960s, he has challenged its preconceived notions by experimenting with industrial and ephemeral materials ranging from latex and satin, to found objects, transmitters and video. In 1968, he began creating wall sculptures using incandescent light bulbs, neon and transformers, experimenting with neon in organic as well as geometric configurations with the aim of giving new form to light and new meaning to the material. Keith Sonnier often works in series, some of which have spanned the course of his career. Elements of such early experimental sculptural works are often recognizable in subsequent installations, even in the architectural interventions on a monumental scale.

The exhibition “Keith Sonnier. Light Works, 1968 to 2017” offers a curated selection of Sonnier’s iconic sculptures from various periods of his career ranging from the first series from the late Sixties such as Lit Circle Series (1968), Neon Wrapping Incandescent Series (1970) and Sel Series (1978-2003), to the most recent ones, including the Chandelier Series (2006-), Portal Series (2015) and Floating Grid Series (2017). Keith Sonnier uses neon glass tubes to create spacial dimensions by interweaving lines, arches and curves of light and color that interact with the surrounding architecture.

An exhaustive volume dedicated to the work of Keith Sonnier is in course of publication.

Images : exhibition view / « Neon Wrapping Incandescent I » 1968, Argon and neon tubes, porcelain fixtures, incandescent bulbs, transformer, 122″ to floor x 49 x 7″, 102″ to bottom of transformer x 49 x 7″ – Copyright the artist