Good Old Neon

Iván Navarro, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb (Matte Black and Warm White), 2014, neon, wood, formica, drum hardware and electric energy, 72″ x 32″.

Iván Navarro was born in Chile, in 1972, the year before Pinochet came to power. He grew up with the fear of being disappeared, and so it’s fitting, in a way, that he’s chosen light as his medium. From his studio in Brooklyn, Navarro makes sculptures of fluorescent tubes. “I make spaces in a fictional way to deal with my own psychological anxiety,” he’s said. He’s created neon men and doors, neon words and portals. Ladders of light. Shopping carts of light. Fences, basketball hoops, and water towers of light. There’s an unnerving, geometric precision to these objects. Coming away from them, you begin to see doorways and boundaries with their same nefarious glow; every act of exiting and entering becomes freighted. Many of his works seem to stretch into infinity, as if beckoning you, against your will, into another dimension—a mise-en-abyme effect that’s sometimes deliberately disconcerting, as in one work that shows you the word BOMB receding toward the horizon. It’s seductive signage: you want to go toward the bomb.

Through October 18, CorpArtes is hosting his first retrospective in his native Chile. These images are drawn from the works on display there. You can see more of his work at Paul Kasmin Gallery’s Web site.