Elisa Balmaceda – Full Spectrum

02.10/2014 – 06.02/2015
EG Null gallery, Cologne

We ‘know’ that there is nothing wonderful about the world, or about ourselves, (…) and still we produce wonder after wonder. Perhaps (…) what science is really about is not to explain wonders, but to create them.
Vilém Flusser

In her first solo exhibition in Germany, called Full Spectrum, Chilean artist Elisa Balmaceda thematizes physical and psychological properties of light. The exhibition starts from the research that the artist has done in this field in recent years as a graduate student and DAAD scholarship.

“The goal of the project is to discuss various aspects of our relationship with light in everyday life. When you live here, you look so inevitably determined by the presence and / or absence of the sun. Excess and lack of light changes everything, from colors, the atmosphere and the way people interact and walk down the street. It is very radical and I think certainly has greatly influenced my perception. I feel there is an implicit and almost spiritual relationship with the sun seems very interesting, especially in such a rational culture, intellectual, based on the individual and the pragmatic. Moreover, we are increasingly surrounded by screens and electronic devices that emit light and lamps seeking to emulate daylight, an issue that also sought to explore in this exhibition, “says the artist.

The exhibition is on display at the gallery in Cologne EG Null space belonging to the company Generali (insurance) and is well on the ground floor and building access. Thus, the exhibition space is both a space for permanent transit for people who work there. This feature, combined with the large windows of the room facing the street, the extension of duration of the sample (four months) and the period of the year when the sample develops are key to understanding the nature of the works .

“Full Spectrum” invites to be seen and experienced as a laboratory, playing with architecture, space and light to create a dialogue between the inside and the outside of the room in every sense; light and dark, the natural and the artificial, the controllable and what is beyond our control. “How to influence the perception of light to those who daily pass through this space and how light affects us and we can simulate, control and manipulate are aspects that I found interesting to investigate in this exhibition,” says the artist.

The exhibition is open until January 30, 2015 in the gallery EG Null, an initiative of the company Generali Deutschland AG. It´s curated  by Georg Elben and Julia Hörner who worked  with the artist and academic Mischa Kuball. The exhibition is supported by the European Southern Observatory (ESO), the Academy of Medial Arts Cologne and luminaires ERCO Leuchten GmbH.