Split Second (Mirror) IV

A pioneering figure in the merger of film, drawing, and sculpture, Anthony McCall (b. 1946, St. Paul’s Cray, UK,) is known for his “solid light” installations, with which he began studying the nature of perception and the material properties of the moving image five decades ago. Achieving hypnotic immersiveness with apparently simple means, McCall’s work characteristically generates sculptural phenomena through projected light. Responding to a desire to experience films “not referring to anything else outside their mere physicality,” McCall has created an essential vocabulary of moving shapes—points evolving into lines, straight or curved blades, often intersecting. Slowly furling and unfurling in silence, these can be equally perceived from the perspective of spatial drawing, minimal sculpture, or abstract cinema—three practices that appear to coincide in McCall’s work since the 1970s. The controlled projection of light planes creates a series of intangible effects in the exhibition space, surprising visitors with the interaction between entities made of fine fog.

Premiered on the occasion of the exhibition Anthony McCall: Split Second, the piece entitled Split Second (Mirror) IV (2022) uses a double horizontal light projection that includes two large mirrors, projectors, and translucent screens. This structure produces a division, or split, of the conic volumes that appear symmetrically positioned in the gallery, as though their movements also wanted to mirror and double one another. Their kinship can be perceived as a two-dimensional phenomenon, or light drawing, on the side of the screens facing the entrance; while on the other side the projected planes create vibrant, inviting pockets of space for visitors to endlessly explore. As we walk into the gallery, we realize that the light beams are projected from an impossible place, the exhibition space suddenly multiplied as a result of the interaction between the mirrors and the screens.