Light & Space

For this inaugural exhibition of the new room at MON, we wanted to escape as much as possible from what can be expected from exhibitions with this discipline and the “objects” usually presented. We wanted to show the porous boundaries that often exist between design and art. We challenged 11 artists from Curitiba, whom we asked to confront the theme of light.

To express these reflections, the exhibition takes place in two parts on MON. The first occurs in an installation, a luminous sculpture that dresses one of the spaces. Metal structures that resemble spiders – the “Arachnidas” – seem to enter a restricted and dark space, invading the room and taking over all surfaces.

The second part of the exhibition comes to exemplify the plurality of languages in the local scenario. The diversity of aesthetic discourses brought together in a single space, interacting and creating a consistent and representative scene. Dialogue emerges as an element of connection and resistance to the democratic discourse that is only strengthened through exchange and respect for the plurality of ideas.

The title of the exhibition refers to the great art movement in Southern California from the late 1950s to the 1970s, Light and Space. As well as the group of Brazilian artists gathered in this exhibition, there is no single aesthetic among the loosely affiliated group of Light and Space artists from Los Angeles, but rather a concern with viewer perception and participation.

This exhibition aims to materialize, through design, illuminating objects, and light installations and, in this way, to highlight local production, the result of an environment rich in different styles and approaches, but which has lost its connections. After two years of isolation, there is a latent desire to exchange and to show the result of the reflections of this involuntary exile. The goal is, through this exhibition, to connect the place with other global creative scenarios.

The initial challenge was to work with the variety of raw materials available: paper, fabric, natural fibers, stones, metals, glass, porcelain, resin, and concrete, among others. The plurality is present in these materials and the aesthetic language and the diversity of the guest studios and designers.

The guiding thread is light and shadow, in its pragmatic and metaphorical sense.

Marc Pottier
Curator