Exhibition opening:
Thursday 21 November, 18–20:00

---

Curated by Dag Erik Elgin

Presenting:

Per Barclay, Camille Corot, Ángela de la Cruz, Dag Erik Elgin, Ane Mette Hol, Lawrence Weiner

---

Light is fundamental to us as humans, and naturally, we have been concerned with how the phenomenon can be explained physically and scientifically. But despite countless explanatory models, from the earliest scientific theories to the revolutionary principles of quantum mechanics, it seems that the physical nature of light still cannot be fully captured by the laws of physics.

In the 17th century, a fundamental debate arose among physicists about the nature of light. In his Traité de la Lumière (1690), the Dutch mathematician and astronomer Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695) formulated one of the first theories describing the movement of light as waves. Later, Isaac Newton (1643-1727) claimed to disprove the wave theory through the so-called corpuscular theory, in which light is described as consisting of particles (Latin Corpusculae). Newton's theory was published in his groundbreaking work Opticks: or, a Treatise of the reflections, refractions, inflexions and colours of light (1704), based on the newly discovered laws of motion, where light is defined as the rectilinear and forward movement of corpuscles. Over two hundred years later, the fundamentally different theories of Huygens and Newton became precursors to quantum mechanics' so-called dual theory of light, where Albert Einstein proved that light can exist both as individual particles of energy and as waves, but that these two properties depend on the method of measurement and cannot be observed simultaneously. Thus, the originally conflicting theories of Huygens and Newton are harmonised in modern physics' understanding of the phenomenon of light.

Nearly three thousand years earlier, however, wave and mass (particle) were brought together in the Greek poet Homer's (900-800 BC) description of the goddess of dawn, Eos. Almost every song in the Iliad and Odyssey begins with the dawn of a new day in the form of Eos traversing the sky in her chariot, dressed in flowing saffron-coloured robes, gently tracing her rosy fingers along the horizon. In classical Greek poetry and mythology, dawn is personified, depicted against the sky in Eos' metaphorical wave-like motion as she prepares the way for her brother, the sun god Helios.

In addition to astronomy and mathematics, the scientist Christiaan Huygens contributed to the development of the microscope. When a completely new world was revealed under the optics he had developed, Huygens' reaction was to request an artist. He had discovered something that was without reference and not immediately accessible, which demanded visualisation of a landscape for future models of thought; that is, artistic formulations that transcend mere illustration. Art can also be illustrative, but its enduring contribution is interpretation, synthesising and formulating visual and poetic tropes that travel through the centuries, aesthetically articulating human and knowledge-based insights.

Art has a descriptive function in encountering natural phenomena, but its lasting impact is above all speculative in the expanded understanding of the word: in the artwork, what has not yet been formulated and has not fully emerged can be made visible. This can involve the contours of an image that has not been given a permanent form, and whose completion strikes human experience as a moment of revelation. Unlike the doctrines and axioms of science that pursue absolute evidence, artistic evidence is different, individual and constantly rediscovered. In repetition, renewal arises, for we are never completely done with works of art that captivate us, and rejoice in encountering them anew, just as each day commences with Eos' journey across the heavens at dawn.

Text by Dag Erik Elgin