Light Constructs
James Clark and Cordy Ryman
Helm Contemporary, New York through February 22, 2025
by William Corwin, February 19, 2025
According to the Midrash, the original light was of an intense spiritual quality and God saw that the wicked were unworthy of enjoying it. Therefore, he separated it from the rest of the universe and set it aside for the use of the righteous in the World to Come. (Rashi)
Every so often we happen upon a little bit of this mythical light, apparently reserved only for the most virtuous among us—it forms complicated luminous mosaics on the floors of cathedrals near stained glass windows and it appears on shorelines at night when we step on phosphorescent creatures hiding in the wet sand. Obviously artists can approximate this light as well, and Light Constructs, at Helm Contemporary, places two artists, Cordy Ryman, and James Clark in close quarters, each producing a unique, ethereal, and otherworldly shine.
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Ryman has hung three of the gallery walls with a sprawling "Constellation" installation, an ongoing project of the artist’s which places small polychrome wooden abstractions in irregular diagonal grid patterns. Despite the celestial name, the objects do not act as independent light sources in themselves; instead, Ryman plays with color saturation and intensity, coating the sides of his lilliputian creations with bright pigments which imbue the reflected light with a gentle tint of the pigment’s color, intermixed with the “normal” gray shadows cast by the sculpture’s volume. The effect is eerie, as it reminds us that even when we aren’t aware of the presence of light, it is everywhere, bouncing off surfaces in the gloom. Ryman’s "Constellations," like the mystic arrangements of stars themselves, herald an unseen presence. The front-facing portion of the sculptures challenge the vapor-like glow—crisp, opaque designs dance across the surfaces, and remind us of the two kinds of light; in "Shingle #1" and "Shingle #3" (both 2024), Ryman composes intricate abstractions composed of sharp painterly solid forms floating over darker backgrounds. These objects are tiny but insist on individual attention. In "Press Cake #4" (2024), a series of black, white, and gray vertical striations on the front of the piece seem to emit a jarring pink light at top, like a bunch of smoldering embers. “Frame Trace #30” (2024) on the other hand, has glowing paint in a delicate line along the sides and top of its front as well as on the side of the volume, giving the impression of a glowing doorway or lantern. “Western Curves #5” (2024) presents a corner instead of a flat plane, and the luminous paint is instead projecting its subtle light directly at the viewer.
James Clark, Tastee, 2017
Cordy Ryman, Shingle #1, 2024
James Clark's machines play with a clandestine generation of magical light as well: Instead of emanating from an unseen source, we are keenly aware of the neon tubes which produce the illumination. But Clark doesn’t leave it there—in “Violaceous” (2012), a horizontal tube passes through undulating waves of plastic; in “Broken Colors” (2022), the gently angled vertical element is bathed or drenched in colors and textures, including gooey black paint that lends an unpredictable delicious messiness to the pure glow of the neon. Several of Clark’s tubes engage or emerge from forms which seem to indicate some unknown mechanism or source of energy, as in “Dancer” (2024) in which a glowing thread dangles above a chrome hemisphere, acting almost like a sleepy lightning bolt. It’s a self-conscious bit of showmanship, but it works, especially as the artist incorporates geometric planes, spheres and folding or curved lengths of day glow-tinted plexiglass. As with Ryman’s reflected pigments, the dayglow plexi approximates a light source in itself, so the play between the gently throbbing neon tubes and the almost radioactive casings and auxiliary panels makes the whole sculpture seem invested with this mystic aura. Clark’s sculptures also play with usefulness—they have the quality of a weapon to ward off demons or perhaps a beacon to summon or harbor them. “Tastee” (2017) places a short length of neon tube in an open ended receptacle of orange plexi. Even though the cup is open at both ends, it collects the light flowing from the tube—who are we to question the efficacy of magical tools?
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Ryman’s constellation of jewel-like paintings faces off against Clark’s glowing contraptions presenting two divergent notions of light and its uses. A series of flat works in the gallery’s second room offer perhaps a deeper dive into the underpinnings of the works. Clark’s “Siloloqui” (2024) series are small works which contain a sediment of materials: gold leaf, fragments of cement and brick dust, and phosphorescent pigment, pressed into the confines of a clear plastic box frame. As the “Siloloqui” works are abstract accretions which reject the idea of composition, they are pure medium, simply existing much as the throbbing neon light exists which energizes the other pieces, sans an elaborate containment format. Ryman’s painting “Leopard” (2024) is an abstraction of pure composition—Ryman paints strictly according to the parameters set out by the grain of the wood which forms the substrate for the art object. The colors have no bearing on the palette of the wood itself—but contained within the striations of the grain, they become a hyper-naturalistic interpretation of recognizable patterns, much like his constellations fold and complicate the base idea of a celestial shorthand of mythological figures. The effect of these two artists as odd bedfellows is not to offer a secondary form of light, but an almost infinite variety of possible lights, emanating from just as many sources.
James Clark, Broken Colors, 2022
Cordy Ryman, Shingle #3, 2024