Time is Light

© 1999 ISAST LEONARDO, Vol. 32, No. 3, pp. 175–182, 1999 175 ARTISTS’ STATEMENTS The Artists’ Statements section of Leonardo is intended to be a rapid publication forum. Texts can be up to 750 words in length with no illustrations, or up to 500 words in length with one black-and-white illustration. Artists’ Statements are accepted for publication upon recommendation of any one member of the Leonardo Editorial Board, who will then forward them to the Main Editorial Office with his or her endorsement. TIME IS LIGHT Hervé Nahon, 18, rue Pavillon, 13001 Marseille, France. E-mail: . Manuscript received 19 October 1998. Accepted for publication by Jacques Mandelbrojt. For many years now I have been working on the subjects of time and light, and the relationship between them. Light is one of the main elements of my work. I use light as a material, in the same way as I would use wood, stone or wax, and also as a tool. In my artwork, I use light for its physical properties (lux, heat) and for its metaphorical meanings (energy, birth and death). I began using the concept of time as an active element in my artwork during a residency at the Kjarvalsstadir Municipal Art Museum of Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1994. My stay in Iceland was the starting point for a new body of work. Previously I had used the medium of light for film, video or slide projections, and as a sculpting element in room installations . In Iceland I began thinking of the notion of time and started to work with ephemeral materials such as ice. When I made my first ice-block piece, I inserted a light bulb in the center of a vessel, filled the vessel with water and froze it. The result was a solid ice cube lit from within. The light illuminated the ice, bringing out the beauty of its crystalline structure. Moreover , the heat from the light melted the ice from the inside, creating an ice cave. I used this system in many subsequent installations, and it is now part of my artistic vocabulary. Time Is Light was the title of one of my recent exhibitions, as well as the title of its central piece (Fig. 1). The exhibition took place at the Passage de l’Art gallery in Marseille, France. The show consisted of four pieces—four views on time—the most graphic being the central installation. Time Is Light showed the materialization of time through the action of light heating and melting a block of paraffin wax. This continuous process acted as a timer for the whole show. The installation consisted of a 66-cm cube of paraffin wax supported by a wooden plinth. A square “chandelier” fitted with 36 long, cylindrical light bulbs was hung just above and in contact with the wax through a counterbalance system. At the opening of the show the piece appeared to be structured , formal and almost minimal in effect , but soon the wax cube started to melt from the heat of the light bulbs, creating a pool on the cube that eventually overflowed and ran down the sides of the plinth, forming a mass of stalactites. A few days later the molten paraffin reached the ground, where it cooled and solidified in layers, evoking the organic strata of a volcanic eruption . This continuous transformation reached its end when the light bulbs touched the plinth, leaving the cube entirely transformed. Time was over and the exhibition closed. Fig. 1. Hervé Nahon, Time Is Light, site-specific installation, 66-cm wax block, 36 lights and wooden plinth, 1998. (Copyright © 1998 Hervé Nahon) The artist shows the materialization of time in his work through the action of light heating and melting a block of wax. 176 Artists’ Statements The other works in the exhibition reflected the same theme, albeit in slightly different ways. Mungo Beans, a series of five Cibachrome photographs, presented the cycle of growth and decay of a plant. 24 Hours Reykjavik was a 16-minute video that split 1 day into 96 sequences of 10 seconds each, one shot every 15 minutes. It was filmed from a single vantage point within a fixed frame as...