Dan Flavin: Dedications in Lights

Publisher: Walther Koenig

Publication Date: 2024

Edited with text by Josef Helfenstein and Olga Osadtschy. Text by Aden Kumler, Simon Baier, Elena Degen, Jules Pelta Feldman, Aden Kumler, Daniel Kurjakovic, Han Lo, and Mechtild Widrich  Flavin’s “gaseous images” illuminate the landscape of the Kunstmuseum Basel

Legendary minimalist artist Dan Flavin (1933–96) began working with fluorescent light tubes in the early 1960s. Arranged in “situations,” he would then further develop them into series and large-scale installations. His pieces often included dedications, making reference in their titles to concrete events, such as wartime atrocities or police violence, or to other artists. The colors and dimensions of the materials he used were prescribed by industrial production. Flooded in light, viewers themselves become part of the works. The space, along with the objects within it, are set in relation to each other and thus become immersive experiences of art, triggering sensual, almost spiritual experiences. Flavin liberated color from the two-dimensionality of painting. This catalog looks at Flavin’s oeuvre in a less familiar setting: the indoor and outdoor spaces of the Kunstmuseum Basel.

Details

Publisher: Walther Koenig

Artist: Dan Flavin

Publication Date: 2024

ISBN: 9783753306094

Retail: $70 | $105 CAN

Binding: Hardcover

Dimensions: 8.75 x 11.25 in

Pages: 254

Reproductions: 150

Artist and Contributors

Dan Flavin

From 1963, when he conceived the diagonal of May 25, 1963 (to Constantin Brancusi)—a single gold fluorescent lamp installed diagonally on a wall—until his death in 1996, Dan Flavin (b. produced a singularly consistent and prodigious body of work that utilized commercially available fluorescent lamps to create installations (or "situations," as he preferred to call them) of light and color. Through these light constructions, Flavin was able to at once establish and redefine space.

$70