A Bright Idea

Light/Art: Mystic Crystal Revelation. At Contemporary Arts
Forum. Shows through January 7, 2007.

Reviewed by Charles Donelan

This group show hinges on the idea that light has achieved such
currency as an art medium that it no longer need be considered
strange or new. Just like oil paintings or bronze sculptures, it
suggests, light works have been around long enough to exist without
justification as artistic innovations.

The concept is fine as far as it goes,
but the exhibition, which is excellent, is far ahead of this kind
of defensive generalization. Light has been normalized as a medium
for decades, long enough to acquire its own canon of artists who
form a set of common references for contemporary work. Light also
seems to be the medium of choice for a new generation of
cosmopolitan artists loosely centered around Mexico City, and this
is where Miki Garcia and guest curator Victor Zamudio-Taylor really
shine. The exhibit uses the CAF galleries to question the whole
Anglocentric object-making art enterprise, and it does so mostly
from a virtually next-door geographic location — the Distrito
Federal of Mexico.