Berndnaut Smilde – Concept: Breaking Light#2

Berndnaut Smilde – Concept: Breaking Light#2

Berndnaut Smilde (b.1978, Groningen, Netherlands) lives and works in Amsterdam. He has exhibited across The Netherlands and also in Toronto, Taipei, Istanbul, Dublin, Paris, London and San Francisco. In 2013, he opened his first large scale solo exhibition in the US at Land of Tomorrow in Louisville, Kentucky, and guest curated a show at the Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht. TIME Magazine named his Nimbus series, with which you can generate clouds, one of the “Top Ten Inventions of 2012”. He was a resident artist at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin in 2008. Smilde’s work consists of installations, sculptures and photos. Using his daily surroundings and spaces as motives, Smilde is interested in the temporal nature of construction and deconstruction. His work refers to both the physical state of a building as well as a moment of revelation that depicts either hope or fragility. Smilde analyses spaces and their appearance and takes them apart to investigate their unique details and features. His artistic point of view often centers on duality. During his Zandmotor residency with Satellietgroep the artist looked into ways of imposing a natural phenomenon onto the surroundings. He is interested in the artificial aspect, the interference on the location, the meaning we project onto weather phenomena and the images created after them. During his residency Smilde continued to work on the idea of refracting the light of a lighthouse in order to project a rainbow onto the landscape. During TodaysArt Smilde aims to open the curtains on the city side of the light house for a short moment so he can compose ‘Breaking Light#2’ on Scheveningen. The lighting rhythm that the light house produces belongs to Scheveningen as an historic and temporal icon. By making use of a prism the artist temporarily changes the function of a lighthouse of just being a beacon. Curated by Satellietgroep for Vuurtoren Scheveningen during TodaysArt 2015