Artists who use neon, an expensive medium, are not thick on the ground in Ireland. Those of us who are, shall we say, of a mature generation, probably think of Dan Flavin’s Minimalist sculptures or perhaps of François Morellet’s pulsing forms, both bodies of neon works dating from the early ’60s onward. We might think of Robert Irwin’s more painterly shapes, Keith Sonnier’s abstracted figuration, or of Bruce Nauman, who often deployed neon for its consumer-cultural references. Artists as various as Joseph Kosuth and Tracey Emin have produced neon text pieces – rigorous in the case of Kosuth and sentimental in the case of Emin – while Iván Navarro has upped the ante, creating large-scale and often freestanding installations. So where does Kevin Killen fit, if at all, in this particular constellation of artists? …see the entire article in the print version of sept’s Sculpture magazine.
