Last Friday I strolled
casually into Chelsea with a list of shows I intended to see. First up was Doug
Wheeler’s installation at David Zwirner Gallery, SA MI 75 DZ NY 12 (2012). A
short line of gallery-goers—maybe six or seven people—were standing outside the
entrance. This was expected. What was not expected, however, were the twenty or
so people inside, not to mention the three hours I would ultimately spend waiting
to see Wheeler’s “infinity environment.” A well-meaning gallery assistant repeatedly
attempted to placate visitors with the assurance that it would be “worth it.” I still puzzle over what, exactly, that means in this context.
How can you measure the worth of an experience against time, after all? (The
time was pleasantly passed, I should add, thanks to my interesting line-neighbor/interlocutor.)
Spoiler Alert: If you have not
yet seen this installation, you may want to stop reading now.
The first encounter with the
installation is the most surprising, and the most exciting. You and five
cohorts wearing surgical booties step up onto a shallow white platform in front
of what appears to be a white screen of some kind. Even though I knew on an
intellectual level that this was not the case—I had read Randy Kennedy’s article in the Times—my senses
overrode my prior knowledge of the work, and I hesitated. Another visitor was
the first to pierce this perceptual wall, which of course, is not a wall at
all. As I stepped into the space which is SA MI 75 DZ NY 12, I felt
almost giddy; it was like walking through a cloud. The space has no corners and
so is impossible—or so it seems at first—to navigate. Not knowing how deep the
space was, I kept walking, very slowly, until I began to feel the floor slope
upwards. This was the place where we had been instructed to stop before
entering the work. I spent the next half-hour staring at the wall, I think. My
eyes played tricks on me—curlicues, almost like smoke, seemed to hover around
me at points. Turning around and seeing the entrance and the lights shatters
the illusion, so I tried to maintain a position deep inside the work. The light
changes color over the course of 32 minutes, giving it a temporal dimension
that I learned about only while waiting in line to get in.
As I left the gallery, hurrying to make
up for lost time, I actually felt a little nostalgic for that first moment of
encountering the work and being so unsure about what I was seeing. It was
exhilarating in a way I couldn’t have imagined to have my senses tested in that
way. It was worth it.
