'Illusion of light' at Venice

VENICE - The exhibition “The Illusion of Light” explores the physical, aesthetic, symbolic, philosophical and political stakes of an essential dimension of human experience. And we are talking about a fundamental element of art: "LIGHT". Since the Renaissance, or maybe even sooner, the light has been one of the top major elements needed in art.

Light makes the invisible dimension become visible. The light of revelation, of illumination can bring people beyond the visible…

The exhibition is featuring the works of twenty artists from the 1960s till today. Thus, the visitor could discover light as if going through all the synonyms of the verbs “to light up”, “bring to light”, “come to light”, “shed light on”.

Conceived by Californian artist Doug Wheeler, the first work of “The Illusion of Light” occupies the entire space of the atrium of Palazzo Grassi.

The light effects of Philippe Parreno’s Marquee refer to a mise en abyme of the system of signs on which the world of entertainment relies.

Bruce Conner’s film exerts a fascination tainted by horror: to reveal a vision of the world that is both gloomy and politically committed, the artist used images made by the American government during the atomic bomb tests in 1946 at the Bikini Atoll.

The works by Sturtevant and Bertrand Lavier stem from radically different approaches, mediums and artistic languages but are here engaged in a dialogue.

Claire Tabouret, the youngest artist of the exhibition, refers to the great Renaissance painter Paolo Uccello and attempts to bring to mind all the nuances of lights, from day to night, in a single painting. Troy Brauntuch’s black paintings go straight to the heart of darkness, to the limits of the visible, to conjure up the desire to see everything, the visual obsession that permeates our society.

The exhibition does not explore entirely the vast field of questions posed by contemporary artists on these concepts. However, it encourages the visitors to invent, in absolute freedom and in light of their own intelligence and sensibility, their path between the opposite polarities of black and white, day and night, reality and illusion.