Neon signage is meant to grab attention. It has been widely used in commercial urban environments like Times Square, Tokyo, and Las Vegas to promote businesses, provide entertainment, and to create a luminous spectacle. Each new sign is bigger and brighter than the next in order to be a beacon of progress, technology, and brand recognition. Today, neon technology has largely fallen out of favor for light emitting diode (LED) lighting solutions that are more affordable, but also provide an even higher level of control, customizability, brightness, and dynamism. But the utility of this lighting technology in the urban sphere remains largely unchanged; to capture attention, control behavior, and immerse the viewer in a wash of saturated color and awe.

“White Light Red Light” offers a scenario in which the signifier (the neon signs spelling out “white light” and “red light”) is initially concealed from view, while that which is signified is all that can be seen. In essence, the viewer of the work can only see one side of the semiological coin, both sides of which inseparably combine to make a “sign” in the Sausserean sense. The neon signs emit their bright glow and beg to be read, but in a way, the viewer of the work already has all the knowledge of the situation they could ever need. The light is already there before them, and the text offers little new information. And while the text of the signs is true, it fails to encapsulate the phenomenal experience of the light in the environment and on other objects and bodies in the room. What begins as “white light” and “red light” morphs into a broad palette of colors through processes of chromatic adaptation, simultaneous contrast, after-image, and the spectral reflectance of anything else in the space. What we have in the end is a semiological system that is more than the sum of its parts and has to be seen to be believed.

Glass, neon, argon, mercury, acrylic paint, wood

36” x 18” x 96”

2024