This autumn, D-Bay is proud to announce the presentation of a major exhibition of Solid Light installations by British-born, US-based artist Anthony McCall (b. 1946). Marking McCall’s very first solo exhibition in mainland China, the project represents a landmark achievement of the inaugural strategic collaboration between SCS and Tate, and forms a highlight of D-Bay’s opening season. As one of the first international partnerships to be realised in Shenzhen Bay Culture Square, the exhibition underscores the institution’s commitment to establishing the Greater Bay Area as a dynamic new hub for world-class art and cultural exchange.
An early pioneer of experimental cinema and installation art, McCall is internationally renowned for his iconic solid light works — projections that use a thin mist to transform light into seemingly tangible forms. Bringing together film, sculpture, drawing and performance, these installations invite visitors to step inside and interact with beams of light, creating unforgettable immersive encounters. Alongside four solid light works, the exhibition will present film, photography, and archival materials documenting McCall’s extraordinary practice across five decades.
McCall’s artistic career developed in the early 1970s within London’s independent film community. D-Bay’s exhibition will feature early photographs and film footage of one of his first performances Landscape for Fire (1972), in which members of the art collective Exit ignited a geometric grid of fires outdoors against a soundtrack of foghorns, wind, and burning oil lamps. Contrasting the unpredictability of nature with mathematical order, this work embodies McCall’s developing conceptual interest in perspective and movement. Other documentation, such as the photograph of a beam of light entering his studio in New York entitled Room with Altered Window (1973), demonstrate his growing exploration of light and architectural interventions.
In 1973, McCall moved to New York, where he began to push the boundaries between sculpture and film. Inspired by the shaft of light emitted from film projectors, he inverted the rules of cinema by asking audiences to turn towards the projector itself. This led to Line Describing a Cone (1973), the first of his solid light works, and the first that visitors will encounter at D-Bay. Acquired by Tate in 2005, the work slowly draws a circle of light on the wall over 30 minutes, forming a luminous cone that cuts through space. Deceptively simple yet conceptually radical, the work reimagines the very nature of film: focusing not on the screen, but on the sculptural qualities of light itself. Sketches and photographs of McCall’s original plans will also be on display.
After a hiatus in the late 1970s, McCall returned to art-making in the early 2000s, inspired by new technologies. Haze machines enhanced the tactility of solid light, while digital projectors freed him from the constraints of analogue formats, allowing for more intricate forms such as travelling waves of light. Doubling Back (2003), McCall’s first major 21st-century solid light installation, and Face to Face (2013), in which projected forms interlock and paradoxically draw the viewer’s gaze both towards the projector and the screen, will both feature in the exhibition.
The exhibition will culminate with Split-Second Mirror (2018), one of McCall’s most visually complex works to date, in which a mirror interrupts a plane of light, further expanding the sculptural possibilities of projection.
By staging Anthony McCall’s first solo exhibition in mainland China, D-Bay and Tate mark the beginning of a new chapter of cultural exchange in Shenzhen and the Greater Bay Area. The collaboration not only brings an internationally significant artist to local audiences for the very first time, but also signals D-Bay’s ambition to position Shenzhen as a design and cultural complex of global influence.