Plucked from a Moment in Time, GLOW: Neon & Light at the Akron Art Museum
Glass, mirrors, light bulbs and neon tubes are media that are most often included in an exhibit with a variety of other mediums — not usually as the main focus of an exhibit. Further, most often neon is associated with text and it’s rare to see a exhibit that focuses on its ability to communicate concepts through light, form and color as in the current exhibit GLOW: Neon & Light at the Akron Art Museum on view through February 9, 2025.
Featuring nine artists from around the world this exhibition was curated by Akron Art Museum Curator, Wendy Earle. It is an exhibit that engages the audience with every turn and offers ways to investigate light and form in an immersive way. But with all these bright lights, don’t be fooled into thinking this is a show full of digital technology. Rather, these artists use analog materials to encapsulate moments and showcase a multiplicity of perspectives. It is the accessible nature of how these artists use their chosen materials that makes all the work included so compelling.
Cleveland-based Jeffry Chiplis is one of two artists included this exhibit from northeast Ohio. Chiplis’ uses commercial signage which he sources through salvage yards, second-hand shops, and word of mouth. While he may not be bending the tubes himself, his reinterpretations of what the original forms can be ie. their “potentiality” is more than a little intriguing.
Argon Chandelier is a 2023 work made from argon, solid state transformer and cork. This is a piece that is full of movement. The various tube elements used to create it bend and intertwine like the wings of a bird or even suggest lightening. It is displayed over ten feet above the floor and glows with a shade of white white inflected with blue, or which may in fact be blue. It has a sense of something plucked from a moment in time that perhaps might never have been here, but of course now is, and for that reason, feels precious and fleeting.
Cathy Cunningham Little’s wall mounted pieces are perhaps the stars of this exhibit. Each composition is made out of pieces of glass that are mounted on a white board and hung on the wall. When the glass elements are hit with a white LED lamp each expresses a color that is projected and blended in a pattern across the surface of the panel. These complex looking works highlight what an advanced understanding of your chosen material can mean for an artist, because the final result is visually arresting and engaging. COCUYO II, is an excellent example of this in action. In this work, seven pieces of glass are spaced in such a way that multicolored pyramidal shapes both inverted and upright interlace each other through the entire composition. It’s a beautiful and arresting gem-like image made with glass and light.
Keith Lemley’s installation piece, Frost Line, is made from tree trunks and neon. Lemley is the second northeast Ohio based artist included in this exhibition and Lemley’s work explores sustainable forestry, sustainable agriculture, and land management. Frost Line is a visual reference to an event when Breakneck Creek, a tributary of the Cuyahoga River near his home/studio flooded the surrounding wooded area of his studio and then quickly froze. The artist explains on the museum label: “As the underlying water receded, the ice formed fractured and geometric islands that clung to the trees on the shoreline and hovered above the ground. In this unexpected moment, the crystalline structure of the ice and resilience of the trees was revealed. By recreating this ephemeral moment with neon and real trees in a gallery, I am monumentalizing and memorializing the collision of the natural systems that created this phenomenon.”
The resulting work is extremely meditative and peaceful, looking something akin to a Japanese rock garden made out of neon and tree stumps. It’s important to note that the trees reach from floor to ceiling and this is an effective way to take you to the moment in time the inspirational event occurred. Here the light helps create an air of cold as it crawls up each stump like frost.
Botanical Proving Ground by Max Hooper Schneider is made from vintage neon color grids, custom acrylic vitrine, plastic flora, epoxy resin, clear rubber and a powder coated steel base. Neon color grids were used like a paint sample for people to choose how they wanted their sign to look. For this piece the neon color grids are placed in a an acrylic tank with plastic plants “growing” in around and through them. It looks like some sort of post- apocalyptic world where technology has hung on and somehow combined with the natural world. It’s as if the microplastic that now pervades our planet has taken over and fully inhabits a botanical form while supporting neon lighting. It’s not a hopeful piece, but it is gorgeous.
Another work that provides more commentary on our current planetary status is Hot Spot (stand) by Palestinian and British artist Mona Hatoum. This sculpture is a map outline of the planet earth in red neon. Hatoum has described the sculpture as a “world continually caught up in conflict and unrest.” The piece makes a distinct neon sign buzzing sound you can hear when you’re near it. The neon map of earth is mounted outside a wire gridded sphere which is placed on top of a pole (stand) with wheels at the bottom. It has a timeless office space look and feel, which helps make the work all the more poignant and meaningful.
It’s extremely exciting to see a show like this one featured in a place like the Akron Art Museum. It is a thoughtfully curated and very serious exhibit full of what is sometimes challenging subject matter. Importantly, it offers a way of looking at neon and light in a way far diverged from the far away gas sign on the highway or the “strip” in Las Vegas. Instead, we are reintroduced to something familiar that is now used to communicate personal and political meaning. It’s well worth a visit to Akron to see.
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