Doug Wheeler

Known for his immersive environments, American artist Doug Wheeler’s pioneering use of light as a medium to articulate space helped define what is often referred to as the Light and Space movement in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s. The most comprehensive overview of the artist’s career to date, this publication features extensive illustrations of his most important works, as well as never-before-published images, drawings, and other archival material.

Through his careful manipulation of space, light, and sound, Wheeler invites his audience to participate in a range of sensate experiences. His innovative installations “invoke an experience of light itself as an almost tactile presence,” as noted by Randy Kennedy in The New York Times.

This monograph is structured around the most significant and substantial essay on the artist to date by the distinguished Italian art historian Germano Celant, who has been acquainted with Wheeler since the early 1970s. Writing about the “intense and direct dialogue about the possible absoluteness of the pictorial invisible,” Celant offers a detailed account of and context for Wheeler’s development as one of the most original and influential artists of his generation.

Based upon extensive primary research, this publication fills a wide gap in the history of the Light and Space movement and makes a major contribution to the historical record of phenomenal art more generally. With its vibrant imagery and ambitious critical approach, Doug Wheeler is a definitive exploration of the body of work by an artist whose significance only increases with time.