Whereas negative space shapes our perception unconsciously, Withdrawal engages with the thresholds of perception by proposing a space in the penumbra of visibility, where borders merge or dissolve within a volume of darkness, understood here as an active material.
As one works or plays with light, you can be surprised by the presence such an immaterial medium takes, and by the way it conditions an environment without altering its materiality, acting instead on our attention. Perception is understood as a practice, a process, an inherently human condition through which space and life are continuously constructed and elaborated.
For this installation, an elliptical field of six diffused lights scales the room, while a small number of linear light elements interrupt, counterpoint, and compose within it. Moving through the installation, one can form and discover shifting geometries; taking time, you can travel through shifts of perception or simply remain. It deals with almost nothing, with thresholds and states of presence like a person awake at 3 a.m.
During the development of the project, the Hermit tarot card was taken as a resonant image: a figure carrying a small light through darkness, associated with solitude, reflection, and withdrawal. It informed the atmosphere and pacing of the installation without becoming a literal narrative.
This project develops as a study and series of tests on the immateriality of light in shaping experience, and on the ongoing curiosity toward the void of darkness.
Eloísa Berno Kölln is a Brazilian Scenography and Exhibition Design student at HfG Karlsruhe. Her practice explores the creation of atmospheres through light, approaching it as a lived and socially engaging experience. Moving beyond and within the black box, she investigates how light shapes perception, presence, and public space.