The Lights On Tampa inaugural weekend in January set the city briefly ablaze. By comparison, the project's second phase has not drawn anywhere near the same attention — which is ironic, since Jeff Whipple's 80-foot-wide video projection on the wall of the Tampa Museum of Art is entitled "Long Time No See." In this acerbic yet frisky commentary on what we talk about when we talk about art, familiar faces pop up in pulsing thought balloons, each person trying to explain what he or she sees, can't see, refuses to see or sees better than you. Meanwhile, their vision is obscured by eyepatches that look like a cross between cucumber slices and 3-D glasses. At one point, Whipple's well-known image of a man and woman poking each other in the eyes comes to life; in this context, it seems less about the battle between the sexes than it does about mutually enforced blindness. See the video soon — it shows from 7 to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday nights, but only through April 8. Whipple's beautiful, unsettling mural, "Illuminations of Ruminations" —300 feet long, hand-painted and, yes, illuminated — is a permanent installation on the museum plaza (however permanent that is). Tampa Museum of Art, downtown Tampa, 813-274-8130.
This article appears in Apr 5-11, 2006.