Brian Clarke’s painting “Lightbulbs” will feature in the exhibition “Burning, Bright: A Short History of the Light Bulb”
October 29th to November 26th at The Pace Gallery,22nd Street, New York.
The exhibition is dedicated to the incandescent light bulb, tracing its transformation in the hands of the artists through the past hundred years. We are very excited about this project, particularly as the subject becomes more poignant as governments around the globe move to phase out the light bulb in favour of more ecologically efficient solutions.
In 1880 by Thomas Edison perfected the electric, incandescent light bulb. In the space of a decade it had revolutionized the way people lived around the world, by the turn of the century, the United States alone had tens of millions of light bulbs in use. For artist, this invention was equally significant. During the course of the next 130 years, the artists' use of the light bulb progressed from a source of illumination to that of subject. From Philip Guston to Francis Bacon to Jasper Johns, the lightbulb took it's place in the pantheon of modern icons. In the second half of the 20th century, artists extended the role of lightbulbs again; from subject matter to medium. Notable examples would be early Pop combines of Rauschenberg and Dine to the conceptual constructions of Felix Gonzalez-Torres.
Confirmed list of artists includes Alexander Calder, Pablo Picasso, Lee Ufan, Man Ray, Robert Rauschenberg, Philip Guston, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Jim Dine, Claes Oldenburg, Brian Clarke, Felix Gonzales Torres, Roy Lichtenstein, Zhang Xiaogang, Tim Noble and Sue Webster, David Hammons and others.