Radiant Terrains: Elements of Light in Contemporary Art from the Permanent Collection

Drawn entirely from the museum's permanent collection, Radiant Terrains explores how artists working from the 1960s to the present have transformed light into sculpture, painting, photography, installation, and metaphor. About Rather than tracing a single artistic movement, Radiant Terrains unfolds through a series of visual conversations. Light appears throughout the exhibition as atmosphere, physical energy, optical illusion, environmental condition, technological signal and spiritual metaphor. Artists employ industrial plastics, resin, pigment, metallic surfaces, photography, lenticular imagery and transmitted light to explore how light transforms matter and continually reshapes our understanding of space, landscape, memory and the cosmos. Southern California has long attracted artists captivated by its distinctive atmosphere—from the plein-air painters and the early Laguna Beach art colony, who sought to capture the region's luminous skies and coastline, to the perceptual investigations of the Light and Space movement and contemporary artists working across photography, installation, environmental art and new media. Rather than presenting a survey of a single style or movement, Radiant Terrains demonstrates how generations of artists have returned to light as one of Southern California's defining artistic subjects. The exhibition features works by Lita Albuquerque, Peter Alexander, Sandow Birk, Jennifer Bolande, Einar and Jamex de la Torre, Sharon Ellis, Anthony Friedkin, Jimi Gleason, Stephen Hendee, Craig Kauffman, Jay McCafferty, Eric Orr, Helen Pashgian, Ilene Segalove, Rena Small, George Stone and Chris Wilder. Highlights include iconic works by Light and Space pioneers Peter Alexander, Craig Kauffman, and Helen Pashgian; Anthony Friedkin's luminous photographs of breaking waves; Stephen Hendee's illuminated architectural environments; Lita Albuquerque's celestial meditations; Jay McCafferty's solar-burn drawings; and installations, photographs, and paintings that investigate light's role in perception, technology, mythology and cultural memory. Presented as part of Laguna Art Museum's annual Art + Nature program, Radiant Terrains extends the initiative's exploration of the natural world through one of its most fundamental elements. Across the exhibition, light becomes the thread connecting ocean and sky, body and landscape, scientific inquiry and spiritual contemplation. Visitors are invited to slow down, move through the galleries and experience how perception itself shifts as light changes. Radiant Terrains: Elements of Light in Contemporary Art from the Permanent Collection is organized by Laguna Art Museum and curated by Tyler Stallings. Read more Toggle Installation Sculpture Painting Mixed media Photography