Dan Flavin

Dan Flavin was born in 1933 in New York City, where he later studied art history at the New School for Social Research (1956) and Columbia University (1957–59). His first solo show was at the Judson Gallery, New York, in 1961. Flavin made his first work with electric light that same year, and he began using commercial fluorescent bulbs in 1963. Major exhibitions of Flavin's work include those at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1967), the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (1969), the Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden-Baden (1989), and Dan Flavin: A Retrospective, a national and international touring exhibition organized by Dia in association with the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C (2004–7).

In 1983, Dia opened The Dan Flavin Art Institute in Bridgehampton, New York, as a permanent installation of Flavin’s work, this renovated firehouse holds a permanent installation of nine works in fluorescent light created by the artist between 1963 and 1981, and a gallery for changing exhibitions. Planned by the artist for the second-floor gallery of the space, the permanent installation traces Flavin’s practice from 1963 -- when he decided to work solely with standard fluorescent fixtures and tubes -- to 1981, just before the presentation was realized. In creating this exhibition, Flavin conceived of the sculptures and the architecture as a single, unified installation. By manipulating the formal, phenomenal, and referential characteristics of light, the installation asks viewers to consider a series of contrasts -- between colors, intensities of light, structure and formlessness, the obvious and the mysterious, and the serious and the humorous.