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Nathaniel Rackowe
Using light, kinetic elements, and common industrial materials, Rackowe makes large-scale works that animate architectural spaces and transform viewers into active participants. Often built on-site, his pieces explore the boundaries of physical spaces, moving through them or casting light about their perimeters like search beacons. His work uses low-tech materials—for instance, metal shower curtain rods, plastic sheeting, and domestic light bulbs—but has an elegant futuristic quality, resembling what one reviewer called “socio-cybernetic sculpture.” Towers (2004; above) features pillars of plywood and corner bracing whose constantly rising and falling interior bulbs send narrow beams of light slicing through the darkened space. In Captive Light (2001below?), light reflecting from acrylic panels forms a scale model of the gallery. The object rotates between constantly shifting light beams from three projectors, refracting the light and distorting the beams, which play across the walls of the space. Building upon Minimalism’s heightened attention to the relationship between viewer, object, and space, Rackowe’s pieces display a complex relationship to their environment. They seem to expose otherwise unseen temporal and spatial rules of the spaces they inhabit by giving them physical form. At the same time, they appear to question the absolutes of the built environment by testing their boundaries and suggesting new paths of movement. Rackowe recently unveiled an outdoor public commission in Victoria Square, London.  |