48 Shadow Planes

48 Shadow Planes bisects the vast atrium of the historic Old Post Office Pavilion in Washington, D.C.  Robert Irwin and his long-time collaborator, the master art-fabricator and conservator Jack Brogan, first installed the artwork in 1983.  The artwork’s straightforward title describes its purpose: to echo the geometry of the surrounding architecture, and to emphasize the ever-changing quality of natural light that filters through the atrium’s enormous glass roof.

In 1979, GSA had invited Irwin to create an artwork for the building, which was then being renovated for offices and retail space.  At that time, Irwin was already well-known for making what he calls “site-conditioned” artworks, which he develops in response to the specific conditions of a room, a building, or a landscape.  These conditions might include the site’s scale, volume, daylight, architectural detail, climate, vista, or topography.

Irwin’s solution for the project was to suspend a grid of scrim panels from the atrium's glass roof.  The panels are made of a special polyurethane fabric that was manufactured in enormous rolls to be used as industrial filters.  Irwin repurposed this utilitarian material to capture the changing effects of light in space.

Viewed head-on, the semi-transparent panels align with the openings of the arcades that run around the perimeter of the atrium.  Yet viewed from the side, the thin plane of scrims nearly disappears.  Our experience of 48 Shadow Planes is not static; it depends on our movement, and the movement of light, through the architectural space.  At its core, Irwin’s art is about helping us to experience the fleeting and often unnoticed visual beauty that we encounter in everyday life.

The reinstallation of 48 Shadow Planes in 2016, upon the Old Post Office Pavilion's reopening as a hotel, coincided with a major retrospective exhibition of Irwin’s work at the Smithsonian Institution’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.  This exhibition, titled Robert Irwin: All the Rules Will Change, traced the evolution of Irwin’s earliest work from the late 1950s through the 1970s, culminating in the historically important and influential site-conditioned artwork that is exemplified by 48 Shadow Planes.