Bill Jenkins at Laurel Gitlen. Courtesy the artist and Laurel Gitlen, New York.
Artists who use light as their primary medium also tend to harbor affection for feats of technical wizardry; think of the candy-colored spectacle James Turrell recently staged at the Guggenheim. For “Wet Light,” his second solo at Laurel Gitlen, Bill Jenkins has created a subtle perceptual experience by manipulating the light and space of the gallery, but in a decidedly DIY manner. Light from the gallery’s existing overhead lamps, as well as its windows, appears to have been channeled into a low trough on the floor via an elaborate system of ventilation ducts fortified with black trash bags. The mechanism sort of works—some light comes out at the end of a tube. More important than its utility, though, Jenkins’s Home Depot contraption appears in the dim space as a mysterious sculptural form, inviting open-ended contemplation.