Darkning, 2012

Ceal Floyer - Berlin, Germany

Video Installation

Known for her acerbic wit and precise minimal gestures, Floyer has applied her uniquely literal approach to “nuit blanche” (white night) and created Darkning, a complex bit of wordplay that starts with that familiar yet thrilling celestial drama of lightning. While "nuit blanche" asserts only a poetic lightening of the night, lightning can indeed render the night white. Using stock footage of this phenomenon and reversing it from white to black actually intensifies the brightness of the image. Thus, by re-rendering it in negative format and reversing its name from lightning to darkning, we are bestowed with the thunderous silence of an oxymoron, a contrary pun perfectly suited to the occasion.

Ceal Floyer (Canadian, born 1968) is based in Berlin. She attended Goldsmiths College and works in video, sound and light projection, drawing, and sculpture. Most recently her work was seen in Canada at DHC/ART Foundation for Contemporary Art in Montreal in 2011. She has also participated in exhibitions at Kunsthalle Dusseldorf; Portikus, Frankfurt; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Kunsthalle Bern; Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin; Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; and in London at Tate Britain, and Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA).

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Richmond Adelaide Centre, 130 Adelaide Street West

This project is indoors.