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The Light III

Liliana Porter

The Light III
2020
Acrylic and assemblage on canvas

72 x 60 inches (182.9 x 152.4 cm)
Signed, titled, and dated on reverse
(Inventory #31781)

Liliana Porter’s new painting/assemblage, “The Light III” uses the simplest of means to explore large topics. The piece is a cleanly and uniformly painted blue/gray canvas measuring 72 x 60 inches (183 cm x 153 cm). Attached, off-center, to this large canvas is a small shelf (fabricated from mere inches of frame molding), on which stands a found, minute, worn and vintage figurine of a train conductor holding a lantern above their head. The artist has casually painted highlights onto the figure and on the large canvas, as if the lantern’s light is actually reflecting off the surfaces and yet her technique is never trying to “fool the eye” but gives a viewer a way to see a scenario in both real-life and imaginary ways.

The small figure is surrounded by the massive quantity of dense blue/gray background. The scenario perhaps allows a viewer to identify with the “conductor,” to stay aware of oneself as the art-viewer and/or to be someone involved in the scenario in relation to the conductor. Maybe a viewer is an innocent child playing with the toy or perhaps is needing guiding light and yet knows that guiding light is more concept than actual thing…

No matter how one engages with “The Light III,” the visual, conceptual and emotional leaps that can occur show how much Porter has been able to use light and lightness as tools for seeing, feeling, understanding and accepting.

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Born in Argentina, 1941. Resides in New York since 1964.

Liliana Porter works in various mediums including printmaking, works on canvas, photography, video, installations and public art projects. Porter was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1980, three New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships (1985, 1996, 1999), the Mid Atlantic/NEA Regional Fellowship (1994) and seven PSC- CUNY research awards (from 1994 to 2004).
Professor at Queens College, City University of New York, from 1991 to 2007.

Her work has been shown nationally and internationally and is represented in many public and private collections, among them:
TATE Modern Collection, London, UK;
Museum of Modern Art, New York;
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York;
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina;
Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, Venezuela;
Philadelphia Museum of Art;
La Biblioteque Nationale, Paris, France;
The New York Public Library;
Museo de Arte Moderno, Buenos Aires, Argentina;
Museo de Bellas Artes, Santiago, Chile;
Museo de Arte Moderno, Bogota, Colombia;
Blanton Museum, Austin, TX;
Museo del Barrio, New York;
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York;
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC;
The Bronx Museum for the Arts, New York;
Museo Tamayo, México D.F.;
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain;
Daros Collection Zurich, Switzerland;
Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires;
Brooklyn Museum, NY, NY
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX

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