Gallery 13 and Gallery 19

Intervention of the illumination habits of two galleries dedicated to French painting of the second half of the XlX century
Bellos Jueves
General curator: Santiago Villanueva
Invited curator: Agustín Diez Fischer
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes
2014

In the year 2014 I was invited to do a project at the National Museum of Fine Arts, as part of the season titled Beautiful Thursdays, which objective was to put the museum heritage in dialogue with contemporary productions.
Instead of installing an artwork, I decided to intervene the illumination habits of two galleries of the museum: Galleries 13 and 19 –both dedicated to French painting of the second half of the XlX century. I was interested in working with what was already there in the space. It seemed to me that the galleries were impregnated with invisible circumstances. 

In gallery 13 I turned the light spots off and turned on the lighting system that the museum uses on Mondays when it is closed to the public to clean and condition the space. This cold flat light, which could be used in any contemporary art gallery, produced a perceptual dislocation when the spectator came from other galleries of the museum. 
Then, In gallery 19, I altered the disposition of the gallery´s lighting fixtures, changing their role and orientation as if the light had lost its way in lighting the art works.

In art spaces, especially in museums, lighting is used to impart a certain theatricality to the works, and at a certain point, the art work exists if it is under a its lights.