150-93
Edoardo Dionea Cicconi
“150-93”
2022
glass, metal, electronics
90 x 90 x 300 cm (h)
Since the beginning, humans have studied and venerated the sun. The sun and earth’s movements create seasons, day and night. The sun’s relationship to earth is essential; it determines life. One of the phenomena caused by the sun is solar storms: as parts of plasma come through magnetic fields on earth, they create an atomic blast and generate colours in the sky called polar light. At the North Pole they are called aurora borealis, at the South Pole aurora australis. Solar storms on our planet’s surface give out huge clouds of electrically charged particles. These particles can travel millions of miles, and some may eventually collide with the earth.
Northern lights, as if from heaven itself, are like curtains of delicate light.They are pale green and rose-pink, and as transparent as a very fragile fabric, and at the bottom edge a profound and fiery crimson like the fires of hell. They swing and shimmer loosely in this electrical storm with equal grace and power.
150-93 is the number of equilibrium of life as we know it in our solar system. The earth is 150 million km / 93 million miles away from the sun. This very specific number defines our existence on earth in a relationship to the sun by its very precise position. This position, if changed even by little, would blow the balance, destroying the life of the planet. It is a number that determines everything.
After his solo exhibition at Cadogan Contemporary in London, Cicconi created a site-specific monumental installation dedicated to the phenomenon of refraction.
Investigating the relationship between matter and light, the artist continues his research on art and science, space and time.
The new installation is a triangular prism that manifests a dual identity. The sculpture by day absorbs the surrounding energy, reflecting the space around it. At sunset this begins to dissolve and reaches complete transparency during the night. When illuminated, the large glass plates take their colours from the phenomenon of the Northern Lights.
What used to be mirrored shields, which delimited space, now unites everything.
Real colours of the aurora borealis were coded and these artificial datas were put into the huge glass plates. The glass plates begin to glow emulating polar light.
The lights are programmed with a small computer. An intelligence that reproduces all the colour scales that humans can only see in the two terrestrial poles. It is a glowing effect, more than a real Aurora. In fact, you will see the aurora stuck into the glass plates, more than see it in the sky.
This glass triangle monolith is the beginning of a brand new chapter in Cicconi’s solar physics based new series related to human evolution and the philosophy of science. Hundreds of people made the trip to Favignana (Sicily) for the unveiling of the installation, thanks to the vision of Jacopo Pizzicannella, ‘picnic affair’ and the local institutions.
Curatorial text by Maria Abramenko
https://dionea.net/press/#jp-carousel-2141
