ORBITAL GALLERY

ART SPACE

The Curved Space Gallery

Alighiero Boetti’s Lampada Annuale (Annual Lamp)

“An expression not of the event itself, but of the idea of the event”

Drawing on the deceptively simple language of conceptual art, Boetti’s work comprises of an oversized 300 watt lightbulb surrounded by reflective metal, encased in a dark blue wooden box, sealed with a pane of glass.

Although minimalist in form, the Annual Lamp asserts itself in the Curved Gallery space as a monolithic presence. The complex clockwork timing mechanism hidden within the midnight blue box is set to illuminate the bulb randomly each year, for a duration of only eleven seconds. Once the viewer is made aware of this, the expectation for the unlikely and unpredictable potential for this object to suddenly illuminate in their proximity bestows an almost mystical aura and sense of fragile possibility to the work.

View Boetti’s work with longing and an optimistic sense of expectation.

Hold your breath and make a wish for illumination.