THE SILENCE AND LIGHT 2011

…So I must put on the board something which I thought on only recently which could be a key to my point of view in regard to all works of art including architecture. And so, I put this on the board: Silence and Light. Silence is not very, very quiet. It is something which you may say is lightless, darkless. There are all invented words. Darkless. Desire to be, to express. Some can say this in the ambient soul-if you go back beyond and think of something in which light and silence were together, and maybe are still together, and separated only for the convenience of argument.

I turn to light, the giver of all Presences, by will, by law. You can say the light, the giver of all presences, is the maker of a material, and the material was made to cast a shadow, and the shadow belongs to the light.    I did not say things yet made here, desire being that quality, that force, unmeasurable force, everything here stems from the unmeasurable. Everything here promises the measurable. Is there a threshold where they meet? Can a threshold be thin enough to be called a threshold in the light of these forces, these phenomena?…

Excerpt from the book Louis Kahn – Essential texts 
(„Silence and Light“ 1968)

This work is a reaction to my strong experience from architecture by Louis Kahn which I’ve been working with during my stay in the USA. Small objects inserted into plastic bags filled with air and suspended from the ceiling are reminiscence to Kahn’s architectural  works .

I visited many of Kahn’s buildings in the vicinity because it was important to visit them physically. In my work I have focused mainly on The Exeter Library. I had been staying there for couple of days, while there, I made several sketches and studied plans one of the most important houses which I have ever found. It was also a great place for reading Kahn’s philosophical texts. In fact, it was a fundamental experience to me.

After the return from Exeter, however, it was important to leave Louis Kahn and particular information about his work behind, and start to work with my own transformation of this experience. Immediately after the time spent in the library building I created small objects from plastic sheets. It was unmediated, spontaneous work.

 I wanted to express the way how we save an experience from an architecture in our minds. So I put the objects I had made into plastic bags filled with air from my breath.  Objects by this floated in closed and transparent space of the plastic bags.

 The installation was also influenced by dance performances which I have seen during work on this project. In particular, It was  by the Martha Graham Dance Company in collaboration with Robert Wilson, and also by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. This experience (working with light, stage setting a phenomenon of dance and movement theater itself) influenced final installation. The bags were suspended from the ceiling by fishing string, so they floated in space. It is important that these objects flutter and rotate in space because it brings transformation to sculptural objects. The movement also brings temporality into the installation. Finally I have used a projector to project strong white light through bags and the objects inside them. At first glance, it is difficult to know which objects are real and which are not.

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