Site: Compton Gallery, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

 

City/State: Cambridge, MA

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Country: U.S.A

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Year: 2016

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Pattern of light is probably the most ephemeral of the exhibition I designed, ephemeral in content and in the appearance. It started with an experiment with light and glass (concave glass lenses) and it developed as an attempt to build a space that looked unfinished, in-progress, a space that somehow embedded the essence of being experimental. An exhibition where the interaction between glass and light became the object of observation, fascination and questioning even if everything inside the gallery was revealed to the visitors and intentionally unfinished. The objects used for the exhibition where made by Peter Houck, director of the MIT glass lab, who was engaged in the progress of creation and experimentation with light together with Seth Riskin, light artist and director of the gallery space. Layers of ephemeral light effects intersect and overlap inside the gallery as layered is the configuration of tools staged to obtained the large scale rotating image projected on the front of the gallery, generated by casting light through a funnel shaped glass object crafted by Houck. Layered it is also the narrative that visitors follow once in the gallery. From discovering the technical layers behind the scene of the front image to learning about the process of creation through a series of preliminary prototypes and hand-sketches that tell the story of the experiment only to visitors who want to spent time to interpret them, like reading the notes of a stolen diary. Until they arrive at the end of the gallery where they find a copy of Houck funnel shaped object used to create the front projection who lured them in. And the cycle is closed

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Team: Seth Riskin