Client: Department of Cultural Heritage of Milan (Italy)

Overview

Carlo Bernardini – The Light that Generates Space 2009
Environmental installation in optic fibers. Dimensions: feet h 66 x 88 x 99.
Palazzo Litta, Milan.

Goals

A mental drawing, executed with the light of the optical fibre, can go beyond the walls, not allowing the viewer to understand its origin.
The lines of light passing through the walls connect different rooms, joining them in the space of a single work, which lacking a complete point of view, in its wholeness can only be reconstructed as a puzzle in the viewer’s mind.
The installation takes over the space and incorporates it.
The spatial form develops a challenging relationship with the space, as it penetrates it, stimulates it and reduces to its power, until transforming it into itself. It is a role play where the space is transformed from the container into the artwork: the drawing of light goes through it penetrating it, and once inside, it goes beyond the walls without the solution of continuity.
The optical fibre line passes from room to room piercing the walls and the floors, combining the external environment with the internal one in a sole drawing: “Permeable space”, the place where Light generates space.

Process

Collaboration between Carlo Bernardini, Galleria Grossetti Arte Contemporanea, Milano, and Dipartimento dei Beni Culturali di Milano.