Sounds of life fade away as you, along with four museumgoers and one museum guard, pass through three successive off-white chambers separating the Guggenheim’s rotunda from Doug Wheeler’s PSAD Synthetic Desert III in the topmost tower gallery. A room shrouded in dim gray-blue neon light reveals itself beyond the third and last chamber, as visitors proceed up a slightly inclined ramp to a small rectangular platform in the center of the space. Gray foam pyramids line the surrounding walls, floor, and ceiling except for one expanse of white confronting the viewer: an unadorned wall, with no discernible edges, corners, shadows, or dimensionality is lit from below by the same neon glow. Casting a diminishing gradation up the wall, the light evokes the illusion of an infinitely receding, horizon-less expanse, unfolding a sort of abstracted landscape before you from this scenic overlook.
Enveloped in near absolute silence, except for the rustle of a jacket, the squeak of a shoe, and the practically imperceptible addition of pink noise (a lower frequency than white noise), the magnitude of sensory deprivation intensifies over time, as you are made aware of your body, its audible workings, and its primacy within Wheeler’s metaphorical sea of nothingness. While the foam pyramids possess a practical function, absorbing all sound within the installation that hadn’t already been extricated by the semi-anechoic chamber that encases Wheeler’s environment, they also serve an illusory purpose: combining the appearance of linear perspective with atmospheric perspective—the impression of depth intensifies.