Art News

Matthew Bown Gallery Turns Off Its Lights for New Exhibition

BERLIN.- Kant, in The End of All Things, suggested that the imagination is more active in darkness than light. In the exhibition noire et pourtant lumineuse, Baudelaire’s description of his lover is applied to the space of the Matthew Bown Gallery, which will be blacked-out for the duration of the show. The exhibition presents work by four artists – Anina Brisolla (Berlin), Alexander Brodsky (Moscow), Gunda Förster (Berlin) and Katie Paterson (London) – which explore our experience of darkness. Anina Brisolla’s video installation Mall explores the after-images that form on the retina when the eye looks into bright light. Created for Noire et pourtant lumineuse, the video-loop conjures these phantom-images by the progressive removal of imagery, transforming light-architecture of a shopping-mall into a disturbing scenario that is