Spatial Code, fiber optic installation at Villa del Grumello, Como 

Italian installation artist Carlo Bernardini creates artworks of pure light, using fiber optics, prisms and sculptural elements to form laser-like geometric schematics that stretch across galleries and other spaces.

I love the way that a single sculpture by Bernardini fills a space. The artist might manipulate his materials to stretch from corner to corner of a room, or he might create a smaller object that then bleeds into the rest of the space with reflected light. The installations where the artist combines physical sculptural elements with fiber optics and lights are especially interesting, because it seems as though there is multiple layers within a single work, and it takes a moment to notice the unlit steel bars adding structure and shadow to the form.

La materia è il vuoto, fiber optics and stainless steel

Bernardini is as interested in shadow as he is light, especially in the way the two work together as parts of a whole. Whether or not it’s obvious at first glance, his artworks rely on shadow in the same way that a painter would utilize negative space. The forms that are created are reminiscent, in their way, of sculptures by Dan Corson.

Corporeality of light, fiber optics