Light is, by one of its definitions, visible energy that allows us to see the world in colour. But there is no such thing as “light in general”: only relations between a source, a medium, a space, and an observer. What we call “visible” depends on who is looking — a human, an animal, or a sensor. Light interacts with us, colouring and discolouring matter. There are no “neutral” lights and no objective colours. Our very ability to see in colour makes us blind to what other individuals see — just as every species is confined to its own partial vision. What remains invisible to us is no less real. Tuning the light spectrum reveals the limits of our perception. The world appears differently, as it truly does to others. Altering appearance through light lets us experience this difference directly with our senses: not to see as others see, but to grasp, viscerally, that perception is never absolute.
Adrien Lucca
Since 2009, Adrien Lucca has developed a multidisciplinary body of work on colour and light, questioning how we perceive the physical world. Far from a sad passion for normalization and the technicization of our relationship with reality, Lucca highlights the strangeness of the link between the world and our perception of it by appropriating scientific and technological resources. His recent projects aim to redefine the very concept of “colour.”