The Palazzo delle Esposizioni's workshop, situated on the ground floor, is an area designed by the architects Daniele Durante_studio bv36 and Adele Savino to foster creativity during the workshop activity and to encourage a reprocessing of the knowledge acquired during the exhibition tour. With its extremely dynamic and versatile setup, it also avails itself of the cooperation of artists commissioned to produce site-specifict projects such as the permanent installation called Pénétrer l'invisible by French artist Nathalie Junod Ponsard, a tunnel of light that greets visitors and guides them inside the workshop, also accompanying them metaphorically into the world of art and of creation. This is followed by the cube, a magic box that presents ever-changing scenarios interacting with whatever exhibition is on at the time, a place of amazement and wonder that precedes the workshop space in which visitors experiment with materials, techniques and artistic vocabularies under a cascade of letters, a meeting point between the mark and the word, our constant daily focal points.
Pénétrer l'invisible
Nathalie Junod Ponsard, Pénétrer l'invisible, LEDS, structure in metal and Barisol. DMX Programming. Dimensions : 50m3, 2007
permanent installation by Nathalie Junod Ponsard, 2007
"The corridor as a wall of light absorbs and envelops the visitor in an endless vortex. The intense light of the complementary colours draws rings that guide the visitor inside this passage. Half of the rings show variations in their colours, then the other half takes over, countering them with its own complementary colours. The lights move forward and their progress grows in intensity. The lights expand on the walls, then grow dimmer while others move forward in their place, displaying fresh combinations. Crossing the corridor, the visitor moves between the walls, surrounded by this vortex of colour that changes every time he moves, drawing him into a kind of visual vertigo. Like waves, these bands of light move in regular, unending succession. This experimentation with light has the nature of a performance and an experience of the visitor's physical and perceptive presence. The inside walls of the corridor are cut by electrical intermittences that redraw variable geometries. This symmetrical alternation of lights generates awe and disorientation. The luminous vibrations are hypnotic and they lead the visitor into a conscious visual immersion in the invisible". Nathalie Junod Ponsard, October 2007
To mark its reopening in October 2007, the Palazzo delle Esposizioni commissioned French artist Nathalie Junod Ponsard to produce a site-specific work for the Education Services' new premises, a permanent installation using a play of lights to invite the public to enter the Workshop, accompanying them also metaphorically into the world of art and creation.
In perpetual motion, the installation consists of two vertical panels alternating warm and cold colours, bright and faded tonalities, harmonious and complementary hues. The light strikes and eliminates all architectural barriers, be they wall, floor or ceiling. Under the impact of colour, everything turns into an endless game of echo and alternation. Passing through the tunnel becomes a physical and sensorial experience based on touching and breathing colour. Its intense palette hits every part of the body, eliminating all sense of time and space. Light guides the visitor from afar and disorients him from close up; a source of energy, of seduction and of bewilderment, the installation puts the visitor in contact both with what he can see and what he cannot see but can imagine, the invisible.
Also in 2007, to mark the Palazzo delle Esposizioni's Mark Rothko exhibition, Nathalie Junod Ponsard produced a work entitled A Tribute to Mark Rothko in the Workshop cube, inaugurating the Education Services' activities and its interaction with current exhibitions. Three horizontal lines of light grace the side of the cube. Each wall is a square of light with colour varations that grow dim, superimpose on one another, mingle and radiate outwards. Visitors are immersed in the light and find themselves in the very same active relationship that Rothko sought and interpreted as a total experience. The spectator feels as though he is inside the work of art and absorbed by the colours, that he has lost all contact with external reality. The work of art becomes a place of refuge.
A picture lives by companionship, expanding and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer, it dies by the same token. (M. Rothko)