Destellos de luz y sus ambivalencias simbólicas

Abstract

Light in art is essentially tied to culturally constructed images and its various metaphors are so enmeshed in human thought that their effect is difficult to ignore. Because of its cultural load, the light in any staging or representation invariably refers, however indirectly, to matters that are in some sense mystical and transcendent—even when it relies upon prosaic electrical devices or simple light bulbs. We might argue, therefore, that the many lights illuminating our electrified everyday reality also play their part in this game of meanings. Indeed, in today's technified world, light does not seem to have lost even the slightest portion of its evocative potential. This is evidenced in the many art works whose intentional ambivalence casts a wry eye on the big issues they address and which set out to demystify their subject, applying novel criteria in how images are created and responded to. But it is also seen in the more traditional metaphors of light which still abound, critical or otherwise, in art works of very different kinds. This article examines the readings that emerge from artworks created with these parameters, the very ones that that are based on contradiction and accept contradiction as their point of departure.