Alfredo Jaar - Tate Modern:

Jaar exhibits at Tate Modern a dark space 

where one comes across two tables. They both have light boxes embedded in their surfaces and they are placed on top of one other in reverse positions. The tables are the same size but one is suspended and movable while the other one is grounded on the floor. When the two tables are on top of each other, the room becomes completely dark. As the suspended table is pulled upwards by strings tied on its legs, a rim of light starts to appear until the space becomes dominated by the bright lights that irradiate from the surfaces of the two tables. The viewer, thus, experiences the effect of becoming blind by the light, but this time it occurs gradually. After being suspended all the way, the upper table slowly goes back to its initial position and the room is filled with darkness again. By providing the public with the glare of light instead of visual images, Jaar invites people to reflect upon the questions raised on the texts presented. He gives us a sensorial experience which affects our stereotypical vision. 

Additionally, he reinforces the absence of the images by giving viewers a glimpse of emptiness 

through the bright screen and lit tables.Similarly to Jaar’s way of thinking, Plato’s Allegory of the Cave points out to the question of how society has its eyes closed to reality – or to the Truth - and how people are condemned to ignorance if they are not able to liberate themselves from their current human 

condition. 

Rothko - Tate Modern:

Rothko was influenced in this body of work by Michelangelo's Laurenhian Libarary in Florence, with its blind windows and deliberately  oppressive atmosphere. Rothko commented that Michelangelo ' achieved  just the kind of feeling i'm after- he makes the viewer feel like they are trapped in a room where all the windows and doors are bricked up, so that all they can do is butt their heads forever against the wall'

'Public Display - Tate Modern' 

              

In his mature work, Rothko abandoned specific reference to nature in order to paint images with universal association. by the late 1940s he had developed a style in which Hazy, luminous rectangles flout within a vertical format. Rothko wrote that the great artistic achievements of the past where picture f the human figure alone in a moment of utter immobility. he sought to create his own version of this solitary meditative experience, scaling his picture so that the viewer in enveloped in the subtly shifting, atmospheric surface.