Explore the transformative Light and Space art movement at Albuquerque Museum April 5–July 20, 2025, featuring groundbreaking works that redefine perception through light, color, and spatial experience.
Light, Space, and the Shape of Time
April 5–July 20, 2025
Albuquerque Museum
The Albuquerque Museum announces Light, Space, and the Shape of Time, on view from April 5 through July 20, 2025. In the 1960s, California Light and Space artists began using new materials like plastic, glass, and neon lights to explore how we see and experience the world. Their experiments with light, color, and reflections transformed traditional definitions of what art is and can be. Instead of making paintings or sculptures, they created glowing, colorful objects and immersive spaces that created the feeling of stepping into another world.
This exhibition showcases not only the first artists of the Light and Space movement but also those who came after them. It highlights how new ideas in science and technology from a wide diversity of artists continue to shape this style of art today. It also emphasizes the important roles that New Mexico’s unique landscapes and atmosphere have played in inspiring many of these artists.
Featured artists include Peter Alexander, Neal Ambrose-Smith (Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation of Montana), LaTurbo Avedon, Larry Bell, Barbara Bock, Dan Flavin, Jenny Holzer, Robert Irwin, Florence Miller Pierce, August Muth, Michael Namingha (Tewa/Hopi), Soo Sunny Park, Helen Pashgian, James Turrell, Leo Villareal, and Kumi Yamashita.
Exhibition curator William Gassaway says, “In addition to hosting powerful recent exhibitions on challenging topics that address timely social and political issues, Albuquerque Museum also values opportunities to encourage reflection and calm. This exhibition is about slowing down and looking closely, considering alternative perspectives, and through those experiences, developing greater empathy for our individual perspectives on the everyday world.”
The Cat (1981), an iconic work by Taos-based artist Larry Bell, consists of twelve floating pieces of solid glass, some of which are coated in vaporized alloy in order to affect viewers’ perceptions of their physical realities. Soo Sunny Park’s Unwoven Light (2013) is a large-scale, immersive installation that uses iridescent plexiglass to transform the gallery space into a shimmering world of refracted light and brilliant color. Abstract in Your Home (2009) by Neal Ambrose-Smith is a neon installation exploring concepts of home, abstraction, and lived cultural experiences. Two large-scale, untitled sculptural light installations by internationally renowned artist Dan Flavin figure prominently in the exhibition. Flavin redefined the relationship between art and space by rejecting any sense of overarching symbolism in his work, instead emphasizing the works’ ordinary materials: fluorescent light, metal frames, and simple circuitry. “It is what it is, and it ain’t nothin’ else,” he once said of his work. “Everything is clearly, openly, plainly delivered.”
For more information, contact Albuquerque Museum at 505-243-7255 or email abqmuseum@cabq.gov.
This exhibition is made possible in part by the City of Albuquerque and the Albuquerque Museum Foundation.
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