Reassembling Split Light

Solo exhibitionsSite-specificSpaceMuseumPaintingVideoDrawings

Apr 22

Written By Lou Calderón

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Installation views of Sculpting Light. Cardboard, tape and screws. Installation views of Reassembling Split Light an Immersive Installation by Carlos Bunga. Photos: Ryan Gamma.

Sarasota Art Museum +info

For this solo exhibition, Bunga created a temporary cardboard structure in the 30-foot-high Koski Gallery located on the Museum’s third floor. Beginning and ending as a dialogue with the existing architecture, this installation transforms the gallery’s spatial configuration for the duration of the exhibition. By deploying light as his primary conceptual basis, just as James Turrell has done before him, Bunga explains that he sculpts light, which cannot be touched, but only felt viscerally.

Accompanying Bunga’s site-responsive structure are selected photographs, videos, and paintings that further showcase the notion of light as a physical and phenomenological component, as well as a metaphor for reflection and hope in his own body of work. The exhibition also includes a set of drawings created after completing his onsite work. This post-installation phase of Bunga’s artistic practice allows him to reflect on the physical and spatial constraints that may hinder his creative process and conceptual scope. Bunga’s transformative installation and poetically resonant images invite visitors to consider how we shape and are shaped by our surroundings, to contemplate their ephemerality, and to attend to light in a time of darkness.