NEW PALTZ, NY.- On view Feb. 7 through July 12, 2026, The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz presents “Watts per Lumen,” an exhibition of contemporary art that approaches light as both a material and an object of study.
As an object of study, light is hard to see. Ambivalently, it is both a particle with no mass and the fastest wave in the universe. As a material, it occupies great expanses of space yet presents itself as mere surface or void. “Watts per Lumen” explores how we nevertheless orient ourselves through an interpretation of the energy that it carries. Through painting, technical studies, installation, photography, sculpture and mixed media, this exhibition considers the ways in which light mediates experiences and transmits an array of consequential information.
“Watts per Lumen” includes work by Mary Ellen Carroll, Chryssa, Darrel Ellis, Nicholas Galanin, Nikita Gale, Leslie Hewitt, Glenn Ligon, Anthony McCall, Rob Pruitt, LJ Roberts, Rosemarie Trockel and Mary Weatherford, along with an outdoor neon wall sculpture by Erika deVries.
It is inspired by the Dorsky’s recent acquisition of artwork by Glenn Ligon, who describes working with neon as "bending light" and relates the material to electrically charged issues of representation, visibility and distortion in America. Complicating the Enlightenment correlation between illumination and fixed objective truth, the selection of artwork depicts light operating through subjective angles, changing conditions, refraction, illusion, shadows and glare.
By engaging with light’s electromagnetic spectrum, several artists address issues of embodied vision and the fundamentally contingent nature of perception. Others experiment with its physics to unsettle spatial distinctions between substance and nothingness or emptiness and matter. The exhibition also includes work in which solar light signals the passage of time and thus elicits thoughts on mortality, the sequence of history, or the scheduling of one’s life. Because light exerts such tremendous influence over how we navigate space and time, the topic lends itself to studies of power. Of particular concern is its ability to command attention. Thus frequently, the exhibition portrays illumination harnessed in the service of commercial, semantic or ideological manipulation.
The exhibiting artists follow light in distinct directions that ultimately converge. Each looks at light directly, if aslant. Each makes the flickering of perception something we can see.
“Watts per Lumen” is curated by Sophie Landres, Curator and Exhibitions Manager at The Dorsky Museum. Museum entrance is free and open to the public.
