Helene Black: 2002 :: Lux Europae

Open air urban exhibition, Copenhagen, Denmark

Organisers: The Danish Cultural Institute

Artwork Funded by The Cyprus Ministry of Culture

… Helene Black from Cyprus makes use of a large gable end in Jarmers Plads. On the one hand, four cruciform relief figures are fixed up on it: beneath each figure there is a neon tube that creates a kind of halo around the figures. In addition, changing images are projected on to the wall with the same fundamental shapes as the reliefs. The cruciform shape was inspired by archaeological discoveries in Cyprus: a woman carrying a man. The changing pictures build further on this theme, whereby a characteristic motif from the pre-history of Cyprus is transplanted to a modern city far to the north.

Painting is static; the image is fixed. On the other hand a light work often has a time dimension, if no more than the moment of lighting and being extinguishing. When extinguished, it is a potential about which one can only guess and which is activated on being lit. But in addition it can be composed in time by means of a rhythmical development of the light sequence or tension between two elements in the work which are separately extinguished or intensified and subdued. This brings about a change in focus and weighting, balance and position. This dynamic time element is one of the essential potentials of light art.
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