2006
High pressure sodium lighting, Window tinting film, Ambient light sensors,
wires, LCD screens.
Gallery 400, Chicago, IL
Rick Gribenas’s Take me in., 2006, involves the literal comparison of two light sources: a
gleaming yellow-orange illumination flooding the area above a gallery wall, and seven LCD
screens, hung on the opposite wall, depicting outdoor daylight. The digital representation is
created with small sensors that capture the shifting emanations reflected on a nearby white-
painted windowsill and translate them to pale hues of white, yellow, and pink. As daylight fades
and the doors of the gallery close, the monitors (gather the uneffected natural ambient light
from the exterior of the building, all the while) the sodium fixtures remain lit. Asserting the
presence of the gallery throughout the evening, this interior light vigilantly filters out through the
windows and turns the room into a glowing beacon in the twilight. The window is the crux of this
concise Conceptual piece, which is the artist's School of Art and Design MFA thesis exhibition:
Gribenas’s installation highlights the transparent pane of glass as a two-way outlet. Here, light
can be seen as a metaphor for information, whether objective or subjective. Just as the different
colors of the empirical measurements do not illustrate equitable exchanges of light, pure data
may not accurately translate the actual comings and goings of a social space. Gribenas
provides a curious comparison that exposes the gallery as a designated space for
multidirectional transmissions, both visible and intangible.
—John McKinnon ArtForum