All Light – Light and Space yesterday and today
Room text
What happens when light not only illuminates, but becomes a material for art in its own right? How does our perception change when spaces are set in motion by light? And what significance can light have today – in an age characterised by digital technologies, social upheaval and ecological issues?
Light is more than just brightness – it creates atmosphere, transforms spaces and shapes how we see the world. In art, light was long used only as a means of representation before increasingly asserting itself as an independent medium in the 20th century. Particularly groundbreaking was the Light and Space Movement, which emerged in Southern California in the 1960s.
Artists such as Craig Kauffman, Mary Corse, Robert Irwin, Helen Pashgian and Nancy Holt experimented with light as an immaterial and atmospheric force. They made targeted use of new industrial materials to make light tangible and transform spaces. The core elements of Light and Space continue to have an impact today: the deliberate use of technology and materials, light as an independent medium, space as part of the artwork, perception as an active process, and atmospheric reduction.
Contemporary artists such as Angela Bulloch, Olafur Eliasson, Mischa Kuball, Nicole Miller and Tatsuo Miyajima take up these central aspects of Light and Space and expand them with new technologies, digital media and social issues. Light appears not only as a physical phenomenon, but also as a medium of information, politics, memory and identity.
All Light brings historical positions and current works into dialogue. The exhibition shows how the fascination with light has unfolded from the Californian experiments of the 1960s to the present day. Light is not merely an optical phenomenon: it is material, a tool of perception and a critical medium all at once.
Artists:
Angela Bulloch, Mary Corse, Olafur Eliasson, Nancy Holt, Craig Kauffman, Mischa Kuball, Nicole Miller, Tatsuo Miyajima, Helen Pashgian, Robert Irwin
The exhibition is supported by:
