San Diego Phenomenal

On Friday we Getty Scholars went on a trip to San Diego to see the 'Phenomenal: California light, space, surface' exhibitions at three locations at MCASD. This exhibition is part of the Pacific Standard Time: Art in LA 1945-1980 series of exhibitions which are on at the moment in and around LA.  Many of the works in 'Phenomenal' use light and its interactions with materials and the viewer. My two favourite works are the ones below. Larry Bell's installation consists of a series of cleverly treated glass panels - some of which reflect and some of which transmit light. As you walk around it you move from mirror to window and so on.

Larry Bell's installation

Thanks to:  http://franklloydgallery.wordpress.com/tag/larry-bell/ for the above image.  

Bruce Nauman's Green light corridor (copyright 2010 Bruce Nauman/ Artists Rights Society ARS New York, Photo: Pablo Mason.  For more details see:http://www.mcasd.org/artists/bruce-nauman

My other favourite work was this amazing narrow green lit corridor, which you squeeze through.  At the end you come out into a space with huge picture windows overlooking the Pacific.  The interaction of your eyes with the intense green light somehow gives an explosion of pinkness as you first glimpse the ocean.

The view at the end of the Green Light Corridor - the Pacific Ocean framed by a cut-away window.

What, to my mind, is more 'Phenomenal' than all the exhibits put together is the view over the Pacific Ocean across the sandstone shore platforms of La Jolla made famous by Emery and Kuhn in their 1980 paper in Marine Geology on 'Erosion of rock shores at La Jolla, California.' It's always nice to see somewhere that features in scientific papers!