Bright Golden Haze

Presented by Annie Bohanon and the Oklahoma City Community Foundation in memory of Marilyn Myers

Oklahoma Contemporary’s new downtown location opens with the inaugural exhibition Bright Golden Haze. This insightful group exhibition explores the ways in which artists use light to create place, both geographic and conceptual, inspired by both the uniquely influential quality of light and space in the state and the new building itself. The exhibition, which takes its title from the first line in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s iconic musical Oklahoma!, presents a thematic grouping of new, recent and site-specific works.

Bright Golden Haze presents works by artists from around the world and in Oklahoma, each providing a unique perspective on how environment, identity and perception are shaped through the medium of light. The exhibition brings viewers on a visual journey exploring varied manifestations of light in artistic practice, beginning with traditional landscape images and ending in immersive, technology-driven installations that rupture the boundaries between physical and digital realities.

Highlights of the exhibition include Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson’s Black glass eclipse, which emits a golden light that cancels all color; Tavares Strachan’s neon installation I Belong Here (White), which asks who gets to decide who belongs where in America; a specially commissioned version of Leo Villareal’s newest work, Star Ceiling; and Alicia Eggert’s The Sun, a celebration of poetry of the Flaming Lips.

The exhibition features recent works by originators of the Light and Space Movement James Turrell and Robert Irwin as well as works by the current generation of artists exploring light technology such as Camille Utterback, whose interactive installation invites viewers to respond to one another’s movement to create a digital “place” on a shared screen.

Integral to the exhibition are indigenous perspectives on light and place, from a site-specific installation by Marianne Nicolson (Dzawada’enuxw First Nation) that provides an alternative view of the Milky Way to a new landscape painting commissioned from Oklahoma artist Yatika Fields (Osage/Cherokee/Creek).

The exhibition continues throughout the year in works around the building, including an interactive installation by Jen Lewin on view in adjacent Campbell Art Park.