Light Art: Light as Medium From Dan Flavin to Contemporary Projection

In January 2025, a four-story building on Dimes Square in New York's Lower East Side was transformed into a living artwork. On the third floor, visitors entered a room bathed in saturated pink neon light. Suspended lines of glowing gas formed a spatial sculpture that altered the perception of the room itself, turning a domestic interior into what the artist called "an illusionary space of vertical topology." The work was The Pink Room Has No Walls - Elements VIII by Anne Katrine Senstad, with a sound environment composed by JG Thirlwell. It was the inaugural exhibition of Temporal Spaces, a curatorial platform that transforms buildings into living artworks. The neon installation could be entered physically, experienced sensorially, and contemplated as pure light. Read more at annesenstad.org.

Light art is art that uses light as its primary medium. The light can come from electric tubes, LEDs, projections, natural light, fire, or any other luminous source. Light art emerged as a recognized art form in the 1960s, when artists began using fluorescent tubes, neon, and industrial lighting as sculptural materials rather than functional illumination. The field has since expanded to include LED installations, projection mapping, light festivals, and architectural light interventions. Light art overlaps with installation art and sound art but is defined by its medium: light itself is the material the artwork is made from.

This entry covers the history of light art from its origins in 1960s minimalism to contemporary practice, the artists who defined the field, and how light moved from a functional utility to an artistic medium.

What Is Light Art and How Does It Work?

Light art uses light the way a sculptor uses stone or a painter uses pigment. The light is not illuminating the artwork. The light is the artwork. This distinction is fundamental. A painting on a wall needs light to be seen, but the light is external to the work. In light art, the light is the work. Remove the light and nothing remains.

The technical means vary widely. Fluorescent tubes, the medium Dan Flavin pioneered in the 1960s, produce light through the excitation of mercury vapor inside glass tubes. Neon tubes, used by artists from Bruce Nauman to Tracey Emin, produce light through the excitation of neon or argon gas, with different gases and phosphor coatings producing different colors. LEDs, which became dominant in the 2000s, produce light through electroluminescence in semiconductor materials. Projection-based light art uses digital projectors to cast images or pure light onto surfaces, buildings, or atmospheric particles like fog and smoke.

The perceptual effects of light art are specific to the medium. Light does not have mass, weight, or surface texture. It cannot be touched. But it can fill a space, change the apparent color of objects within it, create optical illusions of depth and flatness, and produce physiological effects in the viewer's eyes and brain. Prolonged exposure to saturated colored light can produce afterimages, perceptual distortions, and a sense of spatial disorientation. These effects are not side effects. They are the content of the work.

Origins and History

Light art emerged in the 1960s as part of the broader shift from object-based art to environment-based art. The key figure is Dan Flavin (1933-1996). In 1963, Flavin mounted a single fluorescent tube on a wall at a 45-degree angle and called it the diagonal of May 25, 1963. The work was a standard industrial fluorescent fixture with a yellow tube, bought from a hardware store. It was not modified, painted, or decorated. The tube was the art. Flavin's gesture was radical because it removed every traditional attribute of sculpture: no carving, no modeling, no casting, no pedestal. Just light from a mass-produced fixture.

Flavin spent the rest of his career making installations from commercially available fluorescent tubes in standard colors: pink, yellow, green, red, blue, and ultraviolet. His works fill architectural spaces with colored light, transforming corners, hallways, and galleries into immersive chromatic environments. The Dan Flavin Art Institute in Bridgehampton, New York, permanently installed in 1983, houses a series of fluorescent installations in a converted firehouse. Flavin's work is held in collections at the Guggenheim, MoMA, the Tate, and the Dia Art Foundation.

Neon as an art medium developed in parallel. Neon signs had been used for advertising since the 1910s, but artists began adopting the medium in the 1960s. Bruce Nauman's None Sing Neon Sign (1970) uses neon text to create a wordplay that is both visual and linguistic. Stephen Antonakos (1926-2013) used neon as a purely abstract medium, creating geometric forms in colored light that functioned as drawings in space. Keith Sonnier (1941-2020) combined neon with other materials like glass, aluminum, and fabric in his Ba-O-Ba series (1969-1970), creating works that blurred the boundary between sculpture and light.

The other major figure in light art is James Turrell (b. 1943). Turrell's work is not about artificial light but about perception itself. His Roden Crater project, begun in 1977 and still in progress, transforms an extinct volcano in Arizona into a naked-eye observatory. Turrell has carved tunnels and chambers into the crater that frame specific celestial events: solstices, eclipses, and the movement of stars. The work uses natural light as its medium, and the viewer's perception of that light is the content. Turrell's Ganzfeld installations, exhibited at museums worldwide, fill enclosed rooms with uniformly colored light, eliminating depth perception and creating a sense of floating in pure color.

A 2025 study published in the journal Culture and Art Studies examined the traditions of neon advertising in Hong Kong and the USA, noting that both traditions are experiencing a contemporary crisis due to the technological replacement of neon by LED systems, economic constraints, and changes in urban planning standards. The research emphasized the importance of preserving neon heritage as a cultural phenomenon, noting that the hand-bent glass tube and the specific quality of neon light are being lost as LED replacements take over. Read the study at Infra-M.

Key Artists and Practitioners

Dan Flavin (1933-1996)

Flavin is the foundational figure of light art. His the diagonal of May 25, 1963 established the principle that industrial fluorescent fixtures could be art without modification. His later works, including the monuments to V. Tatlin series (1964-1990), used vertical fluorescent tubes arranged in configurations that referenced Constructivist architecture. Flavin's work at Dia:Beacon in New York, permanently installed, fills an entire building with colored light, demonstrating how fluorescent tubes can transform architectural space.

James Turrell (b. 1943)

Turrell works with natural and artificial light to create perceptual environments. Roden Crater (1977-present) is his magnum opus, a volcanic observatory in Arizona. His Ganzfeld installations, shown at the Guggenheim, LACMA, and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, fill rooms with uniform colored light that eliminates spatial perception. Turrell's work is held in major collections worldwide, and his Skyspaces, permanent installations with an aperture in the ceiling that frames the sky, are installed at over 80 locations globally.

Keith Sonnier (1941-2020)

Sonnier combined neon with sculptural materials in his Ba-O-Ba series (1969-1970) and later Neon Wrapping works. His practice demonstrated that neon could be integrated with physical materials rather than existing as pure light. Sonnier's work is held at MoMA, the Met, and the Centre Pompidou.

Iván Navarro (b. 1972)

Navarro uses fluorescent and LED light in sculptural forms that often reference political themes. His Stand series uses mirrors and light to create illusions of infinite depth within ordinary objects like chairs and ladders. Born in Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship, Navarro's work connects the medium of light to themes of surveillance, power, and disappearance.

Tracey Emin (b. 1963)

Emin's neon works use hand-drawn text in neon tubes to create intimate, confessional statements. Works like I Know, I Know, I Know (2002) and You Loved Me Like a Distant Star (2008) transform the commercial, advertising associations of neon into personal, emotional expression. Emin's practice demonstrates how a medium associated with storefronts and bars can carry vulnerability and tenderness.

Anne Katrine Senstad (b. 1966)

Senstad creates neon installations that transform architectural spaces through colored light. Her ELEMENTS series, including The Pink Room Has No Walls - Elements VIII (2025), uses suspended neon lines to alter spatial perception. The works are accompanied by sound environments, creating multisensory installations that treat light as a sculptural and atmospheric material.

Light Art Today

Light art in 2026 exists across multiple forms. Neon remains a medium for artists who value its specific material qualities: the hand-bent glass, the warm glow of excited gas, the colors that LEDs still cannot perfectly replicate. LED technology has opened new possibilities, allowing artists to program color changes, respond to data or viewer input, and create works at architectural scale with lower power consumption. Projection mapping has extended light art to building facades and public spaces, with festivals like Vivid Sydney, the Amsterdam Light Festival, and BLINK Cincinnati commissioning large-scale light installations that draw hundreds of thousands of visitors.

The preservation of light art poses unique challenges. Fluorescent tubes and neon tubes are being phased out in many jurisdictions due to energy regulations. The specific colors and qualities of discontinued tubes cannot always be replicated with LED replacements. Museums and collectors face the question of whether replacing the light source in a light artwork constitutes a restoration or a violation of the artist's intent. The 2025 study on neon heritage preservation noted that both the American and Hong Kong neon traditions are experiencing a crisis as LED systems replace neon, raising urgent questions about how to preserve this cultural and artistic heritage.

See Light Art in Person

Light art is best experienced in darkened spaces where the light can be perceived without competition from ambient illumination. Visit Dan Flavin's permanent installations at Dia:Beacon in New York and the Dan Flavin Art Institute in Bridgehampton. James Turrell's Skyspaces are installed at over 80 locations worldwide, including the Skystone Foundation in Flagstaff, Arizona. For neon art, look for Tracey Emin's works at White Cube gallery in London and Iván Navarro's installations at Galerie Daniel Templon in Paris.

For light festivals, plan visits to Vivid Sydney (May-June), the Amsterdam Light Festival (December-January), and BLINK Cincinnati (October). These events commission large-scale light installations from international artists and provide the best opportunity to see contemporary light art at architectural scale.

For more on the broader field, read our entries on projection mapping, installation art, and neon art, or explore our blog post on how to read a painting to learn more about analyzing visual art across different mediums.