Doug Wheeler: Day Night Day

Due to an increased demand to visit the final day of Doug Wheeler: Day Night Day, on Saturday, October 19, the gallery will admit visitors from a physical line outside of the gallery rather than a waitlist system. We will close the physical line once the wait time exceeds our normal business hours, 10 AM–6 PM. 
 
Please note that we expect prolonged wait times, ranging from 1–5 hours.

David Zwirner is pleased to present a new light installation by American artist Doug Wheeler at the gallery’s 537 West 20th Street location in New York. Over the past six decades, Wheeler has become known for his innovative constructions and installations that engage with the experience of light, space, and sound. On view will be an immersive environment by the artist that further expands on his groundbreaking investigations of the possibilities of luminous space. This will be Wheeler’s fifth solo exhibition with the gallery and the first major presentation in the United States of his work since his 2020 exhibition at David Zwirner New York.

The exhibition presents DN ND WD 180 EN - NY 24 (2024), which is among Wheeler’s most ambitious installations to date. Upon entering the gallery, the viewer first encounters two luminous, rectangular thresholds or “walls” of light, which function as points of entry into an expansive environment that simulates the experience of limitless space, or a “ganzfeld,” where light appears to shift from day to night and back again. The viewer’s perception is heightened to a degree in which, as the artist articulates, “space appears as a volume, almost as matter.”¹

[1] Doug Wheeler, quoted in Germano Celant, Doug Wheeler (New York: David Zwirner Books, 2019), 223.