JoĂŁo Penalvas Light Beam
  • JoĂŁo Penalva's Light Beam
No gallery lights are on inside Western Bridge this winter. Instead, the works of art in the group exhibition—each made of light—are illuminated only by each other. The atmosphere is like an electrical storm. The edges of the art are blurry.

Two pieces haven't left the back of my mind since the night of the opening two weeks ago: Will Rogan's Time Machine (Destroyer) (2008) and JoĂŁo Penalva's Light Beam (2007).

Will Rogan, Time Machine (Destroyer)
  • Will Rogan, Time Machine (Destroyer)
They're both videos, and both contentless on their surfaces. Time Machine (Destroyer) is 20 black-and-white seconds of a handheld camera with the word "Time" stamped on the front—probably it was a gift to subscribers of the magazine—facing the video camera. When the camera shoots, the flash goes off, and the video screen goes entirely white for a moment. When the cameras erase themselves, they leave only light. The title, Time Machine (Destroyer) is a tiny poem.

That piece sits in the middle of floor in Western Bridge's main room. Very high up on a tall wall, projected small and in a corner—where you can certainly miss it—is Penalva's Light Beam. It is four minutes of video in color, although from a distance it looks black and white. The camera's recording a light beam, or more accurately, the particles of dust in the air streaming through the light, which move like a glitter river when you get close enough to really see the piece.

Benjamin Bergmann, Muhammad Ali
  • Benjamin Bergmann, Muhammad Ali
If art had to be reduced to one subject, it would have to be light, which might be like wishing for more wishes on your third wish, since light always acts on something else, even just air and space—it opens up every subject all over again. In Light in Darkness, light is revealed to be its fully unfixed, relative, communal self (as paradoxical as that is).

"ME, WE," German artist Benjamin Bergmann spells out in lightbulbs (after Muhammad Ali's famous quip), each bulb its own physical presence spelling out the letters and also part of a larger scheme of all-mixed-up-radiances—and that scheme is enveloped in the even larger scheme of the light in the room. Is all of this too coded to be seen as political? I don't think so. There's so much to see.

The lights are on through April 30.