American artist Doug Wheeler has transformed a gallery at the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum in New York into an all-white room designed to evoke the sensation of vast infinite space.
PSAD Synthetic Desert III was unveiled yesterday at the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed museum in Manhattan's Upper East Side.
Based on drawings Wheeler created in the 1960s, the installation comprises an entirely white space. Sharp pyramids cover the floor, and walls gently curve at the corners and edges.
A platform among the spikes allows visitors to move into the room, surrounding themselves with the environment and filling their fields of vision.

Lighting beneath the platform, and between the floor and walls, emits a soft glow and produces subtle gradients across the surfaces. The spikes help to dampen the sound. "Doug Wheeler has altered the structure and configuration of a museum gallery in order to control optical and acoustic experience," said curators Jeffrey Weiss, Francesca Esmay and Melanie Taylor.
"He has transformed the room into a hermetic realm, a 'semi-anechoic chamber' designed to minimise noise and induce a sensate impression of infinite space."

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