I loved magic growing up. Watching David Copperfield on television, I would press my small hands against the screen, following his prompts as I felt the heat and prickly static. Magicians like him kept their illusions a secret, which made me feel estranged from the illusion. I still have a fondness for magic, but these days I prefer to watch magicians like Penn & Teller who reveal how their illusions work, inviting the viewer to reflect on, and delight in, the gaps in their vision. I thought of these effects at Pace Gallery’s concurrent exhibitions: After Effect by James Turrell and Ad Reinhardt: Color Out of Darkness, curated by Turrell. 

Turrell and Reinhardt emerged at either end of Minimalism. Reinhardt was a progenitor of Minimalist painting, making increasingly simple geometric compositions with increasingly limited colors. A generation later, Turrell worked with industrial materials like glass and fluorescent light to build installations that explored the viewer’s sensory experience. Exhibiting these two artists is an odd choice for the present moment: it seems to reinforce their canonization at the very moment it is most in question. Despite this seemingly defensive motive, there are in both exhibitions moments of failure: some intentional, others not. As such, these exhibitions offer an opportunity to recognize in these monumental works a kind of fragility, in which their magic is momentarily undone.

After Effect is located in the back of Pace’s enormous first floor gallery on 25th Street, Manhattan. Sitting in what felt like a small movie theatre, I looked through a wall-sized opening framed by a thin red light at a series of phosphorescent green frames. One faced forward and the other turned away, and as my vision traced the edge of each shape, it began to drift through the space without an object to consider. Made entirely of projected light, the frames appeared to be hovering at some distance from where I sat. This is when I noticed the subtle gradations of light between each shape, with red and green dispersing across the space like a nightclub.

The red-green world had just begun to transition into an orange-blue variant when another visitor entered the space, walking straight into the wall with a resounding thud. Flustered, she sat next to me before noticing my presence and jumped back, startled. In this way, the aloof composure of Turrell’s artwork brings to light the viewer’s own clumsy body. Later, a couple joined, and their phones whined for the duration of their presence. Another viewer approached the installation and stuck his hand right through the opening. It was only this gesture of derisive curiosity that confirmed the threshold was open. Turrell’s illusions seek to trip the viewer up, without appearing to have done anything.

The Ad Reinhardt exhibition on the second floor was a more reverential experience. The selection of red, blue, and black paintings was curated by Turrell based on Reinhardt’s wishes. Heavy curtains hang at the entrance to the gallery, blocking the hallway’s fluorescent light. Inside, Reinhardt’s paintings are tucked into peaceful chapels with white benches. Platforms lay on the floor below each work, keeping the viewers from getting too close. Spotlights are turned away from the paintings toward the surrounding grey walls. A hush permeates the space. All of these elements directing the viewer, with a light touch, to focus on each painting’s surface.

The work nearest the entrance is Abstract Painting, Red (1952), a small, vertical canvas painted in warm reds. Centered on the top and bottom are two smaller green-brown rectangles. I stared at these shapes for a long time, admiring their perfect alignment. I thought briefly of stacked marble stones or the narrow windows of a schoolhouse. But as I continued to look, these associations dissipated. Like lumps of clay on a hot plate, the blocks soon lost their edges. Their bottoms drooped and melted back into the red expanse.

Next is Abstract Painting, Blue (1952): another vertical canvas, smaller and narrower than the first, made from three stacked panels. Immediately visible are a grid of squares painted in a range of blue hues. The painting looked covered by powdered cobalt, and not one ounce of light escaped its surface. As I stared at the grid of blue squares, they slowly turned a hazy brown. Puzzled, I turned my head to the right and saw the blue reappear on the top and bottom corners, while the middle stayed brown. Smiling with genuine pleasure, I realized an after-image had formed in my retina, superimposed on the blue canvas. When an artwork reveals an aspect of itself to the viewer, it feels like you’re being let into a secret. An intimacy develops, like the secret was made for you. However, like watching a magician repeat their act, there is also pleasure in watching the secret wane.

Abstract Painting No. 23 (1963) is characteristic of Reinhardt’s later pursuits, commonly referred to as his black paintings. The large square canvas appears monochrome at first, but if you look long enough, a blue cross emerges from the center with four reddish squares in each corner. If hard shapes slowly submerge in the red or blue paintings, then the black paintings move in the opposite direction. Distinct colors emerge from the darkness. In both cases, something is lost and found, and there is a feeling of bittersweetness when the visual effect is lost. The object is no longer there to see you, and you’re left missing the feeling of mutual recognition. It’s like when a person steps in and out of your life, making you feel fortunate to have glimpsed them at all.

This sense of closeness is what Turrell denies the viewer. His works depend on our not knowing how the illusion functions, and though intriguing, it is their seeming fullness and completeness that makes them seem so dated. Their perfection is their ultimate weakness. Reinhardt’s paintings, on the other hand, show you how they are made, inspiring wonder and curiosity. Their secrets are written on their delicate, vivid surfaces. The uncertainty experienced in a Reinhardt comes from observing a fragility in the artwork that is also, by the magic of recognition, our own.