The point of departure for Carsten Nicolai’s installation ‘tele’ at Berlinische Galerie is the anomaly called ‘quantum entanglement’. Somewhat sceptically, Einstein called the phenomenon that two spatially separated quantum systems find themselves in a joint state ‘spooky action at a distance.’ Two particles are linked to one another in such a way that changes made to one of the two have a direct, immediate → Read more
Light, color and space dissolve completely. In the light installations of James Turrell (* 1943, Los Angeles / USA) you lose all sense of space after a while. Neither the dimensions nor the source of the light can be perceived. The eye no longer finds any points of orientation, and the gaze loses itself in the infinite vastness and depth of a dense colored-light mist that envelops you completely. → Read more
Anyone who immerses themselves in James Turrell’s light spaces enjoys a magical experience: the coloured, changing light makes the room seem endless. Born in 1943 in Los Angeles, Turrell took an avid interest in flying at an early age. Today, he describes the skies as his studio, his material, his canvas. In the 1960s, influenced by minimal art and land art, he employed a range of techniques to give the immaterial light a physical presence. → Read more
The way in which Jan Doms applies glass in both architectural sculptures and in dynamic sculptures that play a central role in his performances, has everything to do with the working of light. The glass disk acts as a moving reflecting surface, a feature that is extra articulated during the performance of the multi-disciplinary performance ‘Tanzen auf dem Malerwanderweg’ through the application of light animation and projection. The use of light (animation) can make the glass disc completely → Read more
teamLab is an interdisciplinary group of technology-inspired artists, founded in 2001 around the visionary Inoko Toshiyuki in Tokyo. They develop expansive light art works based on web and system integration, which seek to approach nature in an immersive way. Rooted in the traditions of historical Japanese art, teamLab works on a concept called ‘ultrasubjective space’. The artists use the ability of light to spread in space and in homogeneous media such as air or water in an overflowing and opulent way. Often, the concepts → Read more
For the duration of ten nights the north Bavarian town of Kronach starts to light up at nightfall. Illuminated house facades and light art works plunge the 1,000 year old birthplace of Lucas Cranach into a new, unfamiliar light. 2006 KRONACH leuchtet® started out in quite a manageable fashion; → Read more
The Luminale Festival of Light has been taking place every two years in Frankfurt and the Rhine-Main region since 2002. Founded as a supporting program to the Light+Building, the international trade fair for light and building technology, today, with over 200,000 → Read more
The pleonasm ‘without the light there would be no cosmos, and without the light there would be no human race’ is consequently as fundamentally true as that of the information theory perspective being superfluous. The thousands of years old myths of the metaphysics of light have, in this causal correspondence their source, which, in some examples, ought to become clear. Firstly an example from the history of … → Read more
Across the city of Cologne, the exhibition COLLUMINA runs as a temporary course with works by international artists who work with light as material, medium or metaphor. COLLUMINA is the second exhibition project focusing on light in installations and interventions .. (Article in the current issue of ArtLight by Bettina Pelz and Ralf-P. Seippel) → Read more
In their installations, Charlotte Dachroth and Ole Jeschonnek use a completely new way of making light visible. They create three-dimensional bodies of light, called ‘Lichtvolumen’, that float in space and undermine our everyday perception of light: the light does not expand into space but is concentrated to one spot; it does not need external influences to find its form but shapes itself from within. → Read more
