Doug Wheeler

Trained as a painter, American artist Douglas Wheeler's Minimalist constructions and installations are characterized by their singular experimentation with the perception and experience of space, volume and light. Wheeler was a key figure in the "Light and Space" movement that emerged in Southern California in the 1960s. This book, along with Wheeler's 2012 exhibition at David Zwirner, presents a continuation of the artist's "Light Encasement" series of innovative light paintings, begun in 1965. These works consist of large squares of plastic, with neon lights embedded along the squares' inside edges that blur the distinction between the artwork and its surrounding context. Generally hung on a wall in a pristine white room of precise proportions, these objects create an immersive environment, absorbing the viewer in the subtle construction of pure space. Like Robert Irwin and James Turrell, Wheeler explores the materiality of light and the viewer's physical and emotional reactions to it.