London’s Tate Modern will unveil a new solo exhibition of light installations by the acclaimed British artist Anthony McCall. Long before today’s ‘immersive’ shows, McCall was captivating audiences as early as the 1970s through a fusion of sculpture, cinema, drawing, and performance, by casting three-dimensional beams of light that undulate in form through smoke-filled spaces.
Opening on June 27, Solid Light encompasses a series of existing works that will illuminate across the Tate Modern’s George Economou Gallery. McCall first captivated onlookers through his seminal Light Describing A Cone (1973), described by the artist in the past as “habitable tents of lights”, which invited visitors to interact with the various projectors displaying complex sculptural forms whose temporal structure appeared like drawings in open space.
McCall has evolved over the decades to utilize advances in technology to create rhythmic light displays that rotate like sentient beings in dialogue with one another. Drawing parallels to our ancient ancestors, each installation elicits a response in the psyche that the artist previously discussed with Bomb as similar to “when Homo sapiens were hunting and being hunted for food.”
“Something moving fast could signify danger,” McCall added. “I’m speculating about that, but the fact is that when an unexpected fast action happens nearby you immediately stop and wait, to triangulate the danger and to calculate how long it’s going to take before it reaches you. Perhaps some of the pleasure of cinema comes from the fear of that motion.”
Solid Light opens next week and will be on view until April 27, 2025.
Tate Modern
Bankside,
London SE1 9TG
