Welcome 1999

This is Stephen Antonakos's "Welcome," and it looks like it was made with neon lights and architecture. The neon feels so clean and crisp against the rough concrete. It’s this perfect square, glowing against this imperfect, mottled background, that contrast is really exciting to me. I find it so interesting how the clean geometry of the neon responds to the haphazard, natural form of the tree in front of it. Neon is so tied to the city, to commerce, and signage. But here, the artist has brought it outside and made it a form of subtle communication with nature. It reminds me of Dan Flavin, who also worked with neon to dematerialize architecture, but Antonakos does something very different, he uses the neon to bring together architecture and nature, light and shadow. Ultimately, what you see in this piece is up to you; I find that ambiguity really beautiful.