Dan Flavin - Ikon Gallery

Dan Flavin, untitled (in honor of Harold Joachim) 3, 1977

Dan Flavin:  It is what it is and it ain’t nothing else is at Ikon Gallery until 26 June 2016.

Dan Flavin’s artworks were made by arranging commercially available, industrial, fluorescent light tubes: they are amongst the most sensually beautiful artworks of the twentieth century.

Alongside his Minimalist peers – notably Donald Judd, Carl Andre, Robert Morris and Sol Lewitt – Flavin’s art is bracingly free of representation, illusion, expression, symbolism and spirituality: It is what it is and it ain’t nothing else. And what it is, is gorgeous.

In an article about the forthcoming re-opening (14 May 2016) of the San Francisco MOMA with its newly, and hugely, expanded collection (“We expect our colleagues in other museums to be green with envy” - Neal Benezra, director) it was interesting to read that when asked to name her favourite works from that remarkable collection, associate curator Sarah Roberts, cited Dan Flavin’s untitled (to Barnett Newman) two. Thrillingly, this very piece is (apparently) currently on show in Birmingham’s Ikon, where it is also accompanied by numbers one, three and four of that same series. 
This promises to be a spectacular exhibition.

Dan Flavin, "monument" for V. Tatlin 1966

Dan Flavin, pink out of a corner (to Jasper Johns), 1963

Dan Flavin, untitled (in memory of "Sandy" Calder) V, 1977

Dan Flavin, untitled (to Barnett Newman) two, 1971

Dan Flavin, untitled (to Don Judd, colorist) 1–5, 1987

Dan Flavin, installation view, Ikon Gallery 2016 (Photo. by Stuart Whipps)