Jan Tichy: Light Shop

Fridman Gallery is honored to present Light Shop, Jan Tichy's second solo exhibition with the gallery. Light Shop is an explorative study of light - its collection and dissemination, formation and commodification - taking place in the gradually fading Bowery Lighting District. Reflecting on the disappearance of the neighborhood lighting stores, the exhibition is in dialogue with the works of the photographer Berenice Abbott: Changing New York (1937) - a documentation of a city in transformation, and Documenting Science (1958) - an examination of the formal and material qualities of light.

Bowery Prints is a suite of photograms made with glass objects the artist purchased from the few remaining light shops on the Bowery, layered with images of the shops' interiors. Throughout the gallery, a series of neon sculptures bent and blown by the artist resonate with the commodified light sold in the nearby shops.

Installation no.38 (lightshop), is a manifestation of light inflation in a lab-like setting, re-projecting light collected from the storefront window of the gallery. The work aims to explore the relationships among the digital, analog, and natural light systems and the implications of light pollution. 

Bowery Raw, presented in the downstairs media room, is a two-channel video installation that composes a photographic portrait of the evolving Lighting District. The photos are made audible by translating the underlying RAW image files into sound, and in doing so calling our attention to the untold and invisible story of light.