CALIFORNIA LIGHT & SPACE and beyond

Coinciding with Paris+ par Art Basel, the exhibition takes place in the Parisian home of Alice and Benjamin Paulin, immersing visitors not only in the world of the iconic French designer but also in the ethereal beauty of the art emerging from the California Light & Space movement.

The genesis of the Light & Space movement occurred in LA in the 1950s, with a group of artists including James Turrell and Mary Corse who found inspiration in the light of Southern California. The West Coast Sunshine became their muse and the protagonist of their work, as they relentlessly tried to capture it in the form of sculptures, paintings and installations.

In lieu of paint and canvas, the Light and Space artists developed a sleek, radiant aesthetic from new industrial materials that emanated from the advancements in the aviation industry such as glass and resins: metaphorically reaching for the skies, whilst following their desire to create something sublime, mysterious and transcendental. Yet, in equal measure, there was an embrace of psychology uniting these artists in explorations of human perception: they wanted us to see beyond what met the eye, to provide an ethereal experience that required our engagement with the work, asking us to contemplate and meditate, to pause, and participate in the present moment.

Decades later but following the same principles, there is a group of artists foregrounding the stability and instability of our senses as the primary ‘subject’ of the artwork. Anish Kapoor and Ann Veronica Janssens, are examples of artists today extending in different ways the legacy of the California Light & Space movement and the essence of the “optical minimalism” that it brought forward.