Dia:Beacon - the quiet of scale.

I last visited Dia:Beacon almost two years ago - and a number of pieces still offered up unexplored ideas. On a rainy fall day, with flood warnings and fog alerts, I headed out by car to revisit those ideas.

(courtesy of Dia:Beacon site)

Foremost are the monumental steel works of Richard Serra - giant lemon peels of metal creating vast, ruddy canyons of silence on the concrete floors of one wing.

Click the play button above to view the 45 second video.
The first one felt like an opening in the forest. While the second one, opened like a cathedral from a long, dark curving corridor.

Click the play button above to view the video - it's a bit long (1.5 minutes) - but it follows the path as I did.

Michael Heizer interpreted scale and space by creating massive negative spaces representing the cardinal directions: North, East, South, West. I continually wish to cross the glass barrier to peer down into these perfect cavities, to reach my hands into the space, to listen at their edges. But they are so deep, that they radiate a sense of danger, so that reach might be made while I would lay flat on my stomach to assure I wouldn't slip in.


His carefully balanced boulder elicited a similar desire to touch and engage, and a physical alertness that it might not be safe.



Fred Sandback creates an entirely different exploration of space and illusion, with colored string defining planes.

Here red string defines two planes about to intersect at a right angle. In other pieces, these slices changed the perception of walls and the flow of pedestrian traffic.


Bruce Nauman created a number of active installations: with light, video, or passage.


Click the play button above,