Where most of the artists in this exhibition work with materials that modulate or refract existing light, Corse here works with light itself as the literal content of the object. The argon gas within the Plexiglas box emits its own glow, being energized by electric pulses from a Tesla generator behind the wall where the work is installed, suspended from the ceiling by fishing line. The work is not illuminated; it is luminous. It is one of a bare handful of works surviving from Corse’s 1968 Electric Light series. It was gifted by me to the Dia Art Foundation in recognition of Dia’s justly heralded and long overdue major retrospective of Corse’s work, presented in coordination with the Whitney Museum of American Art, after which the show travelled to the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art.
© Mary Corse. Photo: Bill Jacobson Studio, New York, courtesy Dia Art Foundation. Gift of Michael Straus
