light_poesis

2023

Mirrors are reflective surfaces that reproduce an inverted image of what is happening in front of them - a realistic, yet virtual image that doubles, alienates and fragments what already exists. The mirror itself remains an abstraction, always available and therefore timeless. The reflection in it, however, presents itself as a fleeting instance, anchored in time beyond the dimension of concrete space.

For his exhibition light_poesis in the Waldfrieden Sculpture Park, Mischa Kuball opens up two pavilions that blend harmoniously into their surroundings via new visual axes and reflections from inside to outside and outside to inside. His installation, specially conceived for the location, combines what we otherwise experience as separate: designed architecture and the surrounding nature. Mirror sculptures and light fixtures create immaterial connecting lines between the areas separated by glass panes and make it possible to experience the dimensions of space and time in a new way. Slender steles in the exhibition space and a single one outside spread a pulsating light that is adapted to the changing daylight and accentuates the wintry transitions from day to night. Rotating mirror panes, on the other hand, allow nature outside to enter the room as a virtual image, dynamizing and parcelling it up. The darker it gets, the more the glass wall of the pavilions seems to become a zone of transition, a membrane that creates permeability and intensifies the view of nature.

For Plato, poesis is that which brings something from "non-being into being", a form of imitation of the sensual world. In this case, it is the (reflecting) light that makes the special experience of interior and exterior space possible, but also gives the audience access to a new insight.