0

Bas Jan Ader

Light vulnerable objects threatened by eight cement bricks . 1970 / 2021

+ Anna Meliksetian and Michael Briggs

The installation was first presented in 1970 which was an important and prolific year in Ader’s career. The theme of the Fall was a major concern of the work at this moment. It was at this time he made the seminal films Fall 1, Los Angeles and Fall 2, Amsterdam among other important works. The installation presages the 1971 film work Nightfall in which the artist struggles to lift and ultimately drops concrete slabs on to illuminated light bulbs below from shoulder height, extinguishing them and falling into darkness. The themes of the Fall, used metaphorically as well as literally, precariousness, failure, the futility of resisting forces of nature like gravity, as well as ideas of impending danger, doom and risk are apparent in these works including Light vumlnerable objects… where Ader puts these ideas into three dimensional, sculptural, and material form.
Anna Meliksetian and Michael Briggs
_