Artistic Vision

It’s Grey, It’s Grey
Dave Hardy
March 20 – May 2, 2009
Art in General

It seems like every really great piece of art puts you in a place where it is impossible to exactly describe that point of tension between what the work is doing to you and what it is. Confronted with Dave Hardy’s towering, room length wall of chocolaty vinyl wood shingles obscuring blinding tubes of white neon light, it’s impossible not to feel that tension.
The work could easily be called an odd, post modern take on the conflict between anti-minimalism vs. minimalism: think Eva Hesse vs. Sol Lewitt or Dan Flavin. But the departure is in the way these elements of anti-minimal and minimal combine; purity of obstruction meeting purity of abstraction is such an earnest sight. Hardy has created a spectacle that mediates two ideas so perfectly that the conflict between them is equally as perfect.
One can’t help but wonder if Hardy himself is fully aware of what he’s done. The impression given by the press release is that the work exists in his mind not as an action but as a symbol. The glowing light represents an undefined interior, while the hand made plastic shingles are a metaphor for mass production. In other words, Hardy sees his visual collision as more of an idea about collision and not an action before his viewer. If he wanted us to see a representation of ambiguity, he probably should have left the neon at home. The war between light and dark alone leaves no room for uncertainty and even less room for speculation. This piece is all about the visual impact and the uninterrupted experience. It is the viewer reveling in the light of discovery and equally wrestling with the darkness of imperfection, seamlessly, in the immediacy of one on-going moment. The effect should not be explained, it should be lived.