Nancy Holt at MAK Center for Art and Architecture

These cycles and recurrences were echoed across Light and Shadow Poetics. In California Sun Signs (1972), a series of photographs depicting signage for restaurants, liquor stores, schools, and motels, the word ‘sun’ appears in each establishment’s name, from “White Sun Guest Ranch” and “Sun Gold Date Shop” to “Sunshine Pre-School” and “Sun-Ray Lodge.” Through this meditation on the word sun—and all the memories, interpretations, and sensations it evokes—Holt constructs a visual poem for the viewer, revealing a playful dynamic between language and landscape. As with U.S. 80 SOLO, it is only by traversing large swaths of space and time that such patterns and repetitions begin to emerge. In a sense, Holt used her long journeys to open the doors of perception, welcoming the moments when boredom begins to teeter on the edge of delirium and ordinary sights start to deviate into the otherworldly.

Nancy Holt, Light and Shadow Photo-Drawings (1978). Inkjet prints on archival rag paper made from 35mm transparencies, each 19.5 × 30 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and MAK Center for Art and Architecture. Photo: Joshua Schaedel.

Perhaps most emblematic of Holt’s spatio-temporal musings is Sun Tunnels. The earthwork consists of four large concrete cylinders arranged in an X-formation in Utah’s Great Basin Desert. The MAK Center exhibition included video and photo documentation of the work. Shot from the same perspective—looking straight through one of the cylinders—30 images record the gradual changes in light and shadow that transform the interior of each tunnel over time. Like an industrial sundial, Holt’s tunnels are activated by their surroundings, in continuous conversation with the sun, the sky, and the desert landscape. They serve as both containers and portals, alluding to an infinite beyond without ever showing us the full picture.

“The sky is pure blue,” says Holt in U.S. 80 SOLO, her voice sounding increasingly fatigued as she makes her way through Iowa, Illinois, and Ohio. I could feel that restlessness in my body on my own cross-country drive, hours spent looking through the same window at what Holt calls the “asphalt ribbon” ahead. Until, slowly but surely, a sense of calm crept in. As Holt reaches New Jersey, the place where she grew up, the worn-out tone of her previous recordings gives way to a renewed burst of energy. I felt it too as I got closer to Missouri last summer—the relief and familiarity of the home stretch. The air began to hold more moisture; the environment grew more lush and green. Holt’s power is in her ability to capture these subtle shifts. The artist constructs a frame or commits to a format—be it a concrete cylinder, a curved cutout, or a repeated word—and allows time, space, light, and sound to fill the voids.

Presented in conversation with the introspective and communal spaces of the Schindler House, Light and Shadow Poetics made a strong case for this collaboration between artist and environment. The exhibition situated Holt’s long drives and diaristic entries as far more than studies for her monumental earthworks. They are all part of the same brilliant constellation, living sculptures of the quiet expansions and contractions of time.

Nancy Holt, Sunlight in Sun Tunnels (1976). Inkjet print on archival rag paper made from 35mm transparencies, 50 x 61.5 inches. © Holt/Smithson Foundation. Image courtesy of the artist and Sprüth Magers.