To celebrate Hanukkah this year, The Jewish Museum will present Light x Eight: The Hanukkah Project 2000, an exhibition of contemporary art with each work creating or manipulating light, from December 10, 2000 through January 28, 2001. Eight internationally recognized living artists, including Angela Bulloch, Rico Gatson, Lyn Godley, Anish Kapoor, Michah Lexier, Matthew McCaslin, Catherine Yass, and Jeff Zilm, will be represented in the exhibition. Their works will be installed in unexpected locations inside the Museum so as to illuminate areas throughout the entire building. Two of the works will be able to be seen from outside the building. This dynamic exhibition will constitute a non-traditional, highly conceptual means of marking the eight night holiday and will transform the physical structure of The Jewish Museum into an unconventional, active, quasi-Hanukkah lamp. Hanukkah begins at sundown on December 21 and ends at sundown on December 29, 2000.
Light x Eight: The Hanukkah Project 2000 is The Jewish Museum’s second exhibition on this theme (the first was in 1998). It celebrates the Hanukkah festival and provides an opportunity for dialogue on perception, the ephemeral and empirical nature of light, and light producing systems through the visitor’s response to the art works – sculpture, photography, on-site installations, and projections – on view.
Angela Bulloch's Sound/Pixel/Stack (2000) is an eight-foot-tall, interactive sound stack and light tower that will respond to the surrounding noise of viewers in the lobby by changing the colors of its four screens to up to 250 hues.
Rico Gatson's Shelves with Klandles (Untitled #7) (2000), features painted wood shelves and 70 wax candles molded in the image of Ku Klux Klansmen. Gatson uses symbols of comfort and composure with images of racial stereotypes and hatred.
Lyn Godley's A Dress for Mom (2000) is a celebration of the magic of light, the joy of color, and the elegance of women. Godley created this sculpture by heating, shaping and crinkling sheets of vinyl. This "garment" explores the power of luminescence and its seductive influence on the viewer.
Anish Kapoor's Untitled (2000) is a luminous alabaster sculpture with a hollowed cavity or void. Here the sculptor explores the rusticated material of the stone within a weightless internal spill of light.
Michah Lexier's Two Ways to Make Eight (2000) is a site-specific neon installation in two of the Museum's front windows, flanking its entrance, and playing on the theme of Hanukkah's eight days by showing two ways of writing the digit eight. The artist investigates the systems of measurement which are used to mark physical relationships to time and space.
Matthew McCaslin will create Being the Light (2000), an on-site installation using nine porcelain lights, nine white switches, and receptacles that will be adjacent to The Jewish Museum's fourth floor display of Hanukkah lamps from its renowned collection. One of the lights will represent the shamash, or servitor, of a Hanukkah lamp. From December 10 through 20, all of the lights will be lit. Beginning with the first night of Hanukkah on December 21, and continuing for the eight nights of the festival, one light will be lit for each night until all are lit.
Catherine Yass' Observatory (2000) is a photographic transparency viewed through a light box which shows a view from within the Einstein Tower (1920-24), an observatory in Berlin. Jewish expressionist architect Erich Mendelsohn designed it as a radical departure from grid-like structures through the organic and fluid use of concrete. The observatory provided information to astronomers about the surface of the sun by analyzing the spectrum of colors and subtle distinctions of light.
Jeff Zilm's Free Interval (2000), a projection from a computer file on CD-Rom, suggests the digital creation of an environment through the illusion of a horizon line in a landscape and the proximity of the colors blue and green - reminiscent of air and ground.
The artists in this exhibition came from Canada, England, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania and Texas. The works in Light x Eight: The Hanukkah Project 2000 were selected by a Jewish Museum curatorial committee including Norman L. Kleeblatt, Mason Klein, Scott Ruby, and Fred Wasserman. The exhibition has been coordinated by Aliza Edelman, Exhibition Coordinator at The Jewish Museum.
The Jewish Museum is located at 1109 Fifth Avenue at 92nd Street, Manhattan. Museum hours are: Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, 11 am to 5:45 pm; Tuesday, 11 am to 8 pm; closed Friday and Saturday. Museum admission is $8 adults; $5.50 students and senior citizens; free admission for children under 12. On Tuesday evenings from 5 to 8 pm admission is pay what you wish. For general information, the public may call 212.423.3200, or information can be obtained by visiting The Jewish Museum's Web site at http://www.thejewishmuseum.org.
