Doug Wheeler

49 Nord 6 Est 68 Ven 12 FL

David Zwirner recently presented this new light installation by American artist Doug Wheeler (b. 1939) at the gallery’s 519 West 19th Street location in New York.

Over the past five decades, Wheeler, a leading proponent of the Light and Space movement, has become known for his innovative constructions and installations that engage with the perception and experience of light, space, and sound.

This new immersive environment further expands on his groundbreaking investigations of the possibilities of luminous space.

Image: Installation view, Doug Wheeler, 49 Nord 6 Est 68 Ven 12 FL, David Zwirner, New York, 2020. © Doug Wheeler

Doug Wheeler in the Painted Desert, Arizona, c. 1970

“I used to lie down on my back when I was in Arizona and you could see the zillions of stars and the vault...up there. I’d have to hold on to [bunch grass or] something because I was afraid that I would float right up into that and gravity would not hold me…. I was conscious of the planet in the sense of light.”

—Doug Wheeler

Doug Wheeler

49 Nord 6 Est 68 Ven 12 FL, 2019

Ink and colored pencil on drafting film

31 1/2 x 36 inches
80 x 91.4 cm

Doug Wheeler

49 Nord 6 Est 68 Ven 12 FL, 2011–2012

Drywall construction, white latex, white epoxy paint, white nylon scrim, acrylic diffusers, and Gro-Lux and white UV neon light

184 x 610 1/2 x 504 inches
467.4 x 1550.7 x 1280.2 cm

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Installation view, Doug Wheeler, 49 Nord 6 Est 68 Ven 12 FL, David Zwirner, New York, 2020

The origins of this work can be traced directly to Wheeler’s earliest immersive light environment, which he built in his Venice Beach studio in 1967. He created an envelope of light, its borders unclear, that would immerse perception inside a luminous field. “I was experimenting... with the light not being encumbered, not being enclosed,” Wheeler recalls.

Amsterdam Stedlijk Museum Installation (Environmental Light), 1969.
Installation view, Robert Irwin - Doug Wheeler, Stedlijk Museum Amsterdam, 1969. © Doug Wheeler

In this work, Wheeler engaged with the effects of freeing light and rendering it to become almost “particulate.” For the artist Ed Moses, “It was sort of magical, and mysterious.... light as matter.”

In 1969, an exhibition with Robert Irwin at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam offered the first opportunity to present a “light wall” in public. The critic A. Merck wrote of his experience inside Wheeler’s installation, titled Environmental Light: “A diffused light filled the room; I removed my glasses thinking that the lenses were fogged. But, no. The space had lost its dimensions and I was standing in a sea of light that was tangible. Doug Wheeler had accomplished his objective.”

“One was no longer seeing a work: one was experiencing a spatial event. One was entering into light.”

—The artist Daniel Buren on experiencing Wheeler’s installation at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, in 1969

Doug Wheeler

Amsterdam Stedelijk Museum Installation (Environmental Light), 1969

Partial exhibition floor plan

Subsequent iterations of this type of installation have been presented at museums across the world, including the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (1969), the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2004), and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC (2008–2009).

In 2011, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego commissioned an environmental work by Wheeler for the exhibition Phenomenal: California Light, Space, Surface—itself precipitated by a major initiative by the Getty Foundation and the Getty Research Institute in 2002 called Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A.1945–1980.

This seminal project enabled the elevated presentation and analysis of works associated with the particularly Californian Light and Space movement. In San Diego, Wheeler creates a site specific environment titled DW 68 VEN MCASD 11 (1968/2011).

Doug Wheeler

Installation view, Phenomenal: California Light, Spaace, Surface, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, La Jolla, 2011–2012
© Doug Wheeler
Photo by Philipp Scholz Rittermann

Doug Wheeler, 49 Nord 6 Est 68 Ven 12 FL, 2011–2012. Installation view, Doug Wheeler, 49 Nord 6 Est FRAC Lorraine, Metz, France, 2012. © Doug Wheeler. Photo by Didier Boy de la Tour

The new installation on view at David Zwirner in New York was first realized with the title 49 Nord 6 Est 68 Ven 12 FL in a solo exhibition at FRAC Lorraine, in Metz, France in 2012.

This installation marks the culmination of a body of work which has evolved to refine both technical methods and sensory effects to the utmost degree, transforming the architecture of the gallery and viewers’ sensory responses into a complete experience of light and space.

Dialogues | Doug Wheeler and Vija Celmins

In this episode, the artists Doug Wheeler and Vija Celmins revisit their years in Venice Beach, California in the late 1960s, a scene crowded with figures like Charles Bukowski, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Irwin, and James Turrell. Wheeler and Celmins—old friends and visionaries of their medium—gossip, rehash, map, and even correct this vital piece of art history, while tackling a central question of art along the way: How to impress your sensibility upon the world through your work.

Doug Wheeler and Vija Celmins in New York, 1981

Doug Wheeler

Text by Germano Celant

$75.00

“In Doug Wheeler...the Light and Space movement, finds...one of its most important figures.”

—Germano Celant, author of a new monograph published by David Zwirner Books.

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