Curator: Richard Castelli, Epidemic

If we set aside the human energy expended during the act of creation itself, the heat required to bake clay or to form metal or the sunlight that reveals stained glass, the presence of energy in the artistic process is minimal.

The development of mechanized artworks such as the 14th century Jaquemarts marked the integration of energy in its mechanical form into the creative process. However, even then it served more as a support for the work rather than an intrinsically creative medium.

In the 20th century, with the development of Cinema and Kinetic Art, energy was once again integrated into art in its mechanical form and, more significantly, in its purest form: Light.

The development of new media and the electronic image has only accentuated this trend, the ultimate expression of which is the idea of the virtual world where the disappearance of the Body and consequently of Matter predicts the disappearance of History, Space and Time.

Many of the artists presented here, even those who are among the most accomplished in their discipline, do not wish to be confined to a single mode of exploration, as promising as it may appear. As a result of the depth and breadth of their experience, they are willing to reintegrate Matter in its solid, liquid or gaseous forms, into their artistic expression, confronting it with or articulating it through light and electronic media.

Some works reveal themselves in the intersection of Matter and Light; others arise from their confrontation.

In some of them, Matter becomes Light, and in others, Light becomes Matter.

Madde Işik (Matter-Light) bears witness to a new direction within the media arts where electronic academisms are swept aside in favour of a more intuitive, physical and sensorial approach which returns the Body and its sensations to their rightful place at the centre of the creative act and the experience of art.

The exhibition is divided into two chapters:

Chapter One - Immersion
The first chapter deals with the tradition of the panoramic image that stretches back to the caves of prehistory. The works here extend the panorama through the technologies of stereoscopy and interactivity, developing new forms of narrative with these techniques to first disrupt and then completely re-imagine the screen-spectator relationship. The artists in this section attempt to liberate themselves from the constraints of the classical screen by disconnecting the projected image from the physical projection surface, drawing it out into space and sculpting it.

Chapter Two - Physical Virtuality
The second chapter introduces a series of more "concrete" works that use physical media to articulate the relation between Matter and Light organically. The media employed in these works include an ink television, a panel consisting of thousands of hand-oriented micro-mirrors and the vibrating surface of a basin of water lit by powerful beams of light.

Richard Castelli
Curator