2001 VEAG-Medienfassade BERLIN (DE)

When the glass becomes a prism of consciousness

At the VEAG in Berlin, my painted and engraved glasses are not simple objects, they are light traps, photon hunters who transform the invisible into visible. Each translucent surface becomes a theater where the ancestral drama of energy meeting matter is played. Glass, this fused then solidified silica, is already a metamorphosis: sand heated at 1700°C, pure energy that has solidified in transparency. Every painter is an alchemist by adding pigments, are engravings not deliberate scars that fracture the passage of light, creating trapped rainbows.

Profane and spiritual temple: an oxymoron that captures the nature of this exhibition

My works in the VEAG space become modern stained glass and reading glasses. The Berlin light, this northern clarity, sometimes pale, sometimes golden, crosses them and metamorphoses. Each solar ray that, during the day, penetrates these paintings on glass is fragmented, colored, reinvented. The luminous energy becomes narrative. The engravings on glass are writings in negative: I remove material to let more light pass, or on the contrary to disperse it otherwise. Each line engraved is a scar that tells: here, I released a little more energy; there, I forced her to dance differently. I like to travel between the visible and the invisible, between the material of glass and the immateriality of light, between the tangible and the transcendent.

The video on the front: the energy released

Then, on the front of the VEAG, a video projects what the glass contains: the energy finally delivered from its translucent prison. Video projection is itself an act of pure energy, a collective experience, light pixels launched from the openings of architecture, photons shot like arrows from the projector to the outside, transforming the cold facade into a living screen. This facade becomes urban epiphany: the Berlin passers-by, pressed in their daily lives, are suddenly stopped by this riot of light. The video pulses, breathes, dialogues with the falling night. She is the free double of the glasses – what the interior works whisper, the facade screams.

The complete circuit of energy from the sun to the human eye, through a creative gesture.

Natural light enters the VEAG. It goes through my painted glasses, colors there, breaks there. She emerges transformed in the exhibition space
Then, in projected video, it spouts out again to meet the glances of passersby, where she becomes consciousness, emotion, thought.
Berlin is as a sound box. The VEAG, former temple of energy (Vereinigte Pathologies- und Bergwerks-Aktiengesellschaft) is transfigured into a perfect place for this work. This architecture that once distributed electricity in Berlin, now distributes another form of energy: that of art, contemplation, interior transformation. My lenses capture the light of day, the projections create their own day in the night. In my turn to temporarily become a conductor of energy, as was this building, but of a more subtle energy, one that changes not the bulbs but the consciences. Artisan and shaman?

Come on, let’s open the door: everything is light, everything is energy – let’s be brokers.