Behind the Scenes with Randy Gibson, Exhibitions Associate
To launch a new series of Dia Art Foundation employee interviews, Randy Gibson, exhibitions associate, reflects on his time spent studying with La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela. An artist and composer, Gibson’s involvement with Young and Zazeela began soon after he moved to New York City in 2003. While in their service, he received a rare musical education that changed the course of his life and practice. Here, Gibson discusses his background, experiences with Young and Zazeela, and involvement in their pivotal work, Dream House, a version of which was added to Dia’s permanent collection in 2015.
Randy Gibson singing his Apparitions of The Four Pillars in The Midwinter Starfield Symmetry under The 72:81:88 Confluence in a setting of Quadrilateral Starfield Symmetry A:L Base 11:273 - 2016 - photo by Steven Pisano for Avant Media
What background and experiences led you to pursue working with La Monte Young?
I started playing percussion when I was six. As my interests developed, I was introduced to the work of John Cage and later Fluxus, which led me to La Monte Young.
I remember two formative experiences as a youth in Colorado: hearing John Cage’s Ryoanji (1983–5), and seeing James Turrell’s Trace Elements, Light into Space (1991). Ryoanji inspired me to compose rather than perform music. Trace Elements introduced me to ideas of slowness and perception. Much of my early work explored Cageian ideas through a lens of slowness.
When I began studying with La Monte in 2003, my work snapped into focus. He pioneered slowness, and the precision with which he works demands it.
I was transformed by Young’s Just Charles & Cello in The Romantic Chord (2002–3). I attended every performance at the Church Street Dream House, transfixed by the way the work weaves in and out of stasis and density, and by Marian Zazeela’s masterful projection Abstract #1 from Quadrilateral Phase Angle Traversals (2003–) that is integral to the experience of the piece.
Just Charles takes a microscope to a single chord from The Well-Tuned Piano and explodes it into a four-hour masterpiece. It opened my eyes to the possibility of a system-based approach across multiple works and inspired my own reductive aesthetic that would become my calling card. I had found my guru to guide me toward cohesively bringing these interests into my own practice.
Meaghan Burke performing in Randy Gibson’s Apparitions of The Four Pillars in The Midwinter Starfield Symmetry under The 72:81:88 Confluence in a setting of Quadrilateral Starfield Symmetry A:L Base 11:273 - 2016 - photo by Steven Pisano for Avant Media
For those who are unfamiliar, can you explain the Dream House and your involvement with that particular aspect of Young and Zazeela’s work?
At its core, Dream House is a work about collaboration and continual refinement. It is an installation in sound and light, but it is also a condition for performance. Performance in Dream House takes place on an eternal continuum—at each rehearsal and every performance, the work is improved artistically and technically. What makes it so magical is that it exists within its own rules, almost beyond the worldly realm. This can only happen when a space is given over entirely to the work within it.
Every iteration of Dream House is different, responding to the architecture and conditions of its site. Marian’s Magenta Day / Magenta Night (1989– ) is especially responsive. In the permanent Church Street Dream House, the work tints the windows in pure magenta, and for the 2015 installation at Dia Chelsea, the windows and skylights were magenta or a particularly arresting blue. In both spaces the air is suffused with intense color. Photographs cannot capture the vibrating saturation of Marian’s lights, and a recording cannot imitate the ecstatic physicality of La Monte’s music. The two combined are an intoxicating visceral experience, like floating in eternity.
I was initially involved with Dream House through performance production, working on sound, lights, documentation, crowds, and fabrication. The work is a living entity though, and through my discipleship I came to understand the dedication required to make and sustain work at this level. Ultimately, I was an integral part of the installation of Dream House at Dia Chelsea and helped maintain the work throughout its initial run there.
Randy Gibson’s Rational Wedge 7:8:9 (Double Black) - 2019 - Oil and Graphite on Reclaimed Linen
How did your practice as a composer-artist grow during your time working with Young and Zazeela?
I wouldn’t be the artist I am without these years of service to La Monte and Marian. Their practice of continually refining work toward perfection is pivotal for me. This led me to design my own system of creating based on specific and consistent numbers from the harmonic series, which in turn allows me to travel further with each new work.
It also reinforced my desire to press the conditions under which I present work, to explore what that experience can become, and inspired me to make visual work that is in direct conversation with my sonic practice; from projection-based work that incorporates sound, to paintings which are created using the same rules as my musical compositions.
Are there aspects of Dream House that you feel are underrecognized?
La Monte once told me that everyone talks about “a La Monte Young Dream House,” but in fact there is no such thing. There is no Dream House without Marian Zazeela. I think Marian’s place in the history is woefully underrecognized. She pioneered working directly with light as a medium. She made her first light works in 1962, around the same time as Dan Flavin was developing his icons, and years before Turrell’s projection pieces.
The valuable and revolutionary work of women artists is too often disregarded, and that’s a disgrace. This erasure is pervasive, but to hone in on Minimalism, both musical and visual, the establishment has focused on male artists and doesn’t reflect the vast amount of work made by women. Imagine where we would be if these artists’ voices had been championed and encouraged as intensely as those of their male contemporaries.
TIGUE performing Randy Gibson’s The Four Pillars Appearing from The Resonating Discs invoking The 72:81:88 Confluence in a setting of Quadrilateral Starfield Symmetry ATS4 Base 6:81 - 2017 - Photo by Charles Ludeke
How do you view the continued impact of Young and Zazeela’s work on artists today, including yourself?
There’s an incredibly long tail to their influence. I would say La Monte is the most influential composer of the second half of the twentieth century. So much current music can be traced directly back to Minimalism, and La Monte is its progenitor. While there are generations of artists who are directly influenced by La Monte and Marian, there are countless others who may not even know their names but for whom that influence is undeniable.
Dream House specifically offers a place to reset and a model for a way of creating. Many artists now, myself included, are looking to inspire contemplation—and La Monte and Marian paved the way. The work itself rewards slowness but the patience and care with which it is created is the real lesson.
Beyond the aesthetic and conceptual influence, which is certainly present in my own work, I would hope that their way of working has a profound and lasting effect. I know it has on me. It stems from a deep belief in their material, and a reaching for the sublime. I think we all need more of that now.
