Light Art

I cannot pretend to understand all that flies under the moniker of ‘modern art’, but this piece must have made enough of an impression on me as it became my phone wallpaper for many years.

A friend and I were in Montreal in the early Spring of 2019, at the start of their flood season. Medium-scale emergency responses were underway not too far from where we were grabbing fancy breakfasts, visiting bookstores, and touring museums. Not my typical vacation itinerary, but I was happy to yield the planning reins and tag along.

I knew about the disasters, by the way, because I was employed by the Canadian Red Cross at the time. Each morning began with a new bombardment of email notifications requesting volunteers to support with sandbagging, relief efforts, and reception shelters. (I was not eligible to assist as I could not speak French.) I am not sure why we chose to visit the city during its rainiest time, but it was a fun vacation regardless.

A significant part of it was spent discovering hidden treasures like random underground scenes (some literally underground). Places of diverse art, where you could stumble upon a group sitting together listening to a recording of someone’s a cappella humming composition, view an interpretive dance installation, encase yourself in an interactive moon display with beanbag chairs… you get the gist.

Or, as pictured above, you could happen upon an entire room in a basement gallery devoted to a single artwork – of bright green lights pointed into the corner of a room, carefully shielded to create the effect of a luminous object resting against the wall. Prompting a rather unexpected and philosophical discussion between two viewers, in my friend and me, on the weight of shadows. So at least we can thank it for that.

[In case you are wondering, light is massless. As are the phenomena of shadows. That being said, light may also transfer energy into whatever it strikes, temporarily imbuing it with slightly more mass until the object is able to radiate that energy out. A similar object in shadow and thus not struck by light would technically have less mass, albeit briefly. In even simpler terms, light is a substance (photons) while shadows are a concept. One is a thing that can carry energy; the other is just language we use to describe a lack of a thing.]

Here is another angle of the piece:

This week’s amusingly hollow image.