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Futura Seoul presents the first monographic exhibition in Asia of Anthony McCall (b. 1946), a pioneering artist who has explored light, time, space, and audience interaction throughout his career. This exhibition offers a comprehensive overview of McCall’s artistic trajectory spanning nearly half a century. Beginning with his early film and performance works such as Landscape for Fire(1972), created in the UK, the exhibition traces the evolution of his practice. It highlights the pivotal moment in 1973 with Line Describing a Cone, which marked the inception of his renowned Solid Light series. The survey continues through to his more recent installations, which have become increasingly sophisticated since the 2000s through the integration of digital technology. Together, these works map McCall’s sustained experimentation and conceptual inquiry into the possibilities of light, space, and time as artistic materials. Featured works include Traveling Wave(1972/2013), Breath III(2011), Circulation Figures(1972/2011), Between You and I(2006), and Skylight(2020), all of which reveal how McCall’s visual language has evolved, exploring volumetric forms and sculptural qualities across decades.

Emerging in the early 1970s in dialogue with the New York avant-garde film scene, McCall began by examining the physical and temporal nature of film as a medium. After a two-decade hiatus from 1979 to the early 2000s, he returned with a body of work that combined digital technology with meticulously constructed light-based installations. McCall has redefined cinema through what he calls expanded cinema, integrating elements of sculpture, drawing, and installation. By removing the screen and projecting light into space, he invites audiences to step into three-dimensional environments shaped by light and time. These immersive works allow audiences to move through and around sculptural volumes of light, experiencing their form and transformation over time. Audience participation has always been central to McCall’s practice. In Landscape for Fire, he explored the boundary between material and image; in the Solid Light series, he sculpts light itself. As audiences physically engage with the space, their presence alters and completes the work, generating a dynamic interplay between perception and response. McCall’s installations radically reimagine cinematic space and the experience of duration and movement.

His work resists simple classification. Oscillating between the physical and the intangible, stillness and motion, clarity and ambiguity, McCall creates what might be called “sculptures of time.” His practice has continuously evolved alongside technological shifts, yet remains grounded in a consistent philosophical inquiry. In an age where image-based art is increasingly immersive, McCall’s approach remains visionary and relevant. Rather than tracing a linear evolution, McCall’s oeuvre reveals a structure of recursiveness and variation. This exhibition foregrounds his enduring question—can light be sculpted beyond the image?—and shows how that question has been persistently and rigorously pursued over decades. In doing so, it presents McCall’s work as a future-facing lens through which we may reimagine the spatial and sensory contours of our time.

For over five decades, Anthony McCall has focused on the fundamental elements of cinema light and — time—exploring new sensory experiences through their interplay with space and movement. His work transcends traditional boundaries, creating immersive environments that redefine how audiences engage with art.

This archival space offers an intimate glimpse into McCall’s meticulous creative process. It features a rich collection of materials, including idea sketches, detailed notebooks, storyboards illustrating the temporal shifts in his Solid Light works, performance stills, exhibition views and posters from the 1970s.

Among these, McCall’s notebooks stand out as vital tools for organizing his artistic thoughts and documenting the genesis of his ideas. Spanning over 180 volumes, these notebooks contain diagrams, sketches, calculations, graphs, and maps—records that vividly capture the early stages of his installations and performances.

A particularly striking aspect of McCall’s practice is his precision in planning spatial and temporal structures. His performance scores resemble musical compositions, where mathematical calculations and temporal configurations are meticulously crafted. These scores not only reveal the spatial and temporal frameworks underpinning his works but also deepen audiences’ understanding of his innovative approach to art-making.

This sequence of seven footprint drawings, serves as the structural foundation for the vertical installation piece Breath (III), part of Anthony McCall’s renowned Solid Light series.

For McCall, drawing is not merely a preparatory step but a central element in the creation process. His Solid Light works, which explore dynamic forms within time and space, demand meticulous planning and simulation for precise realization. Drawing functions as a critical tool for visualizing and concretizing how linear beams of light expand and transform into geometric shapes within space, ultimately manifesting as sculptural forms. This process plays a pivotal role in determining both the final form of the artwork and the viewer’s experience.

The expansion and contraction of light forms evoke the sensation of breathing in and out. Observing this phenomenon inspired McCall to incorporate the concept of “breath” into his Solid Light work, and also to recognize the possibility that these simple geometric abstract forms like lines, waves and circles might, through the use of just image and motion, be able to describe other sensations of the corporeal.

This sound installation, first created in 1972 in the UK, exemplifies Anthony McCall’s minimalist approach while offering an immersive and physical experience to its audience, much like his solid light works that utilize light.

In the installation, dense waves of sound made — from white noise, but sounding unmistakenly like ocean waves—repeatedly roll through a 12-meter-long exhibition space, gradually gathering speed and volume before crashing explosively on the floor at one end.

These sound waves create an invisible yet palpable sculpture with a commanding presence. Five hemispherical speakers are arranged in a straight line along the gallery floor, allowing audiences to move freely within the space and distinctly perceive the motion of the waves. As McCall puts it, “the purely sonic wave can almost be seen traveling down the room.”

This configuration not only engages auditory perception but also stimulates visual and spatial awareness, reflecting McCall’s characteristic experimental approach.

The original tape for this work was lost, but is reconstructed in 2013 using five tracks and five speakers. This revival underscores McCall’s ongoing commitment to exploring sensory experiences through innovative mediums.

This is a documented outdoor performance that explores new possibilities at the boundary between natural landscapes and contemporary art through the primal medium of fire. This work became a pivotal starting point for Anthony McCall’s Solid Light series, which has continued from 1973 to the present.

Collaborating with the British artist group Exit, McCall orchestrates a sculptural choreography where small fires are ignited systematically across a field. The performance is guided by a meticulously planned score resembling a musical composition, which dictates the ignition sequence and timing of 36 small fires arranged in a 6 x 6 square grid. These flames evolve in response to shifts in time and space, creating a dynamic interplay between natural elements and human intervention.

As part of McCall’s Fire series, this work examines the ignition, extinction, and spatial transformation of fire from multiple perspectives. Landscape for Fire is an early work of McCall’s investigations into these themes, offering audiences a visually and sensorially immersive experience through the calculated progression of flames.

The piece also embodies both Minimalism and Conceptual Art. By combining elemental forces —fire, wind, earth— with the rigid structural formality of the grid, McCall creates a unique aesthetic environment that audiences can directly engage with. His precise use of scores to plan spatial coordinates and temporal sequences underscores the conceptual rigor behind his practice, revealing his commitment to crafting works that are both visually striking and intellectually profound.

McCall’s first films (all 16mm) were records of live performances outdoors. While he was editing Landscape for Fire he became increasingly interested in the discourses around avant-garde film, particularly admiring the films of Andy Warhol, Michael Snow and Paul Sharits. As he showed the completed film Landscape for Fire he became intrigued by the fact that the film was a second-hand version of the fire performance, when it was the performance itself that he considered the primary work of art. This realization set in motion a train of thought: rather than being a film of a performance, could a film be a performance in its own right? This led him, in mid-1973, to conceive Line Describing a Cone, which became the first of the Solid Light films.

His Solid Light was a film that encouraged the audience to turn their backs to the screen, looking instead at the beam of light coming from the projector. Ultimately, it was this cinematic problem that led McCall to explore “light” itself, and the light, in the way he was using it, lent itself to sculpture, to performance, and—underlying all three—to duration.

Anthony McCall’s 1972 performance-based installation in London marked a pivotal moment in experimental art. In this work, McCall transformed the space by adding a pair of giant mirrors facing one another, distributing torn-up newspapers across the floor and inviting photographers and filmmakers to simply document their own presence, creating a dialogue between the participants and their environment. In 2011, McCall reimagined this early performance as an installation, reconstructing the original setting and projecting archival footage onto a central screen.

Every 30 seconds, the footage alternates between frozen images accompanied by ambient sounds, such as camera shutters and footsteps on newspaper, and silent images of the participants in motion, at work. This cyclical structure of mirrors, newspapers, and repetitive imagery explores themes of documentation, circulation, and time while encouraging active audience engagement.

The participants in McCall’s original performance observed one another while continuously generating images —a process that not only examined the circulation and consumption of imagery but also seemed to anticipate today’s selfie culture and social media dynamics. Reflecting on this evolution, McCall noted that while the performance once appeared hallucinatory, it now feels strikingly familiar, highlighting shifts in how personal images are created and consumed. His work probes the essence of photography and film, as well as the interplay between history and the present.

Central to McCall’s artistic practice is the concept of “expanded cinema,” which he was instrumental in shaping during the avant-garde film movement of 1970s London and New York. As a member of the London Filmmakers Co-operative, he challenged traditional cinematic boundaries by integrating performance, installation, and audience participation into his works. His piece Circulation Figures exemplifies this experimental approach; its alternating patterns of motion and stillness create a unique rhythm that interrogates the flow of time and the stillness of moments.

McCall’s use of mirrors and projections extends spatial boundaries while expressing temporal dynamics—a hallmark of his Solid Light series. These works transform projected light into sculptural forms that occupy three-dimensional space, inviting audiences to interact physically with the artwork. The newspapers used in his installations evoke the era when public events were monopolized by mass media while private lives remained relatively hidden. In contrast, his 2011 reconstruction reflects a world transformed by digital technology and social media, where image circulation has become decentralized and pervasive.

This tension between past and present creates a layered viewing experience in McCall’s work. The newspapers serve as symbolic bridges connecting historical context with contemporary realities. His art not only revisits its origins but also adapts to new technological landscapes, making it both timeless and deeply relevant today.

For over five decades, Anthony McCall has redefined the boundaries of film and installation art, crafting a distinctive artistic language. To begin with, as an avant-garde filmmaker in the early 1970s, McCall adopted the concept of expanded cinema, which sought to transcend traditional cinematic forms. Through minimal light projections, he began creating sculptural forms that evolve in three-dimensional space over time.

Between You and I encapsulates McCall’s artistic exploration, offering an immersive experience that engages light, space, time, and audience interaction. In this piece, two vertical Solid Light forms are projected side by side from a height of 10.8 meters onto the floor below. Over a 32-minute cycle, these light forms gradually merge and transform, creating a dynamic interplay of shapes. By using light and time the fundamental elements — of cinema—McCall eliminates the screen entirely, projecting directly into space. This invites audiences not just to observe but to physically enter and become part of the artwork. Such participatory engagement positions McCall as a pioneer of immersive environments in contemporary installation art.

The concept of expanded cinema is further evident in how McCall integrates time and movement into his work. Audiences witness the gradual transformation of volumes of light in real-time, echoing cinema’s temporal narrative while focusing on spatial experience. By merging the cinematic emphasis on time with installation art’s focus on space, McCall creates an evolving spatial narrative—a “sculpture in time.”

As its title suggests, Between You and I delves into themes of interaction and relationships. The two solid light forms visually embody the exchange and adaptation inherent in human connections. Over time, they adopt and exchange each other’s traits, offering a poetic metaphor for interpersonal dynamics.

Skylight is one of the latest works in Anthony McCall’s renowned Solid Light series, which integrates light, space, time, and the audience’s experience to create a distinctive artistic encounter. Like his earlier work Between You and I, this piece relies solely on projected light, mist, and duration to propose a new interpretation of materiality. The beams of light evolve gradually, forming volumetric shapes that occupy three-dimensional space, a hallmark of McCall’s approach that treats light as a tangible, sculptural medium.

The installation is further enriched by an immersive soundscape composed by David Grubbs, whose audio evokes rumbling thunder and flashes of lightning resonating throughout the space, amplifying the sensory impact. As visitors move around the slowly shifting forms of light, they experience the work from multiple perspectives, embodying McCall’s belief that art should be physically and actively engaged with—a principle central to his practice.

Skyligh was first exhibited as a maquette in 2020 and is being shown at full scale for the first time at Futura Seoul in 2025.