Albedo
Collaboration with Cecilia Nercasseau.
Street Kabinet, Berlin.
Curated by Elisa Rusca, Sva Levy and Opay Golberd.
2016
“Albedo” was an event at Street Kabine with Opay Golberd's performance with the beginnings of Badecima.
As a second show at the newly born "Street Kabinet", Chilean artists Cecilia and Sofia Nercasseau are invited to occupy the exhibition space with a light installation, Albedo.
The term "albedo" represents the percentage of light loss that a planet can reflect. In other words, albedo is the reflection coefficient of a surface. Thinking of our Earth, reflected sunlight creates the white halo that surrounds us as it observes us from space.
The name itself comes from the Latin "albus", white, and can be measured on a scale from zero (no reflection from a perfectly black surface) to one (perfect reflection from a white surface).
As a second meaning, albedo was used in alchemy to indicate a state of matter when trying to transmute something into gold: the moment of whitening that occurs before turning a stone into gold.
Cecilia and Sofia Nercasseau Gibson, half alchemists, half astronomers, gathered melting objects in Berlin and turned them first into a unique piece of mineral sculpture and then into gold: the unusual rock, suspended and illuminated, becomes a planet, which gently rotates on itself in the center of the exhibition hall and whose albedo can be admired. The lost and random meteorite that remains motionless, floating in the darkness, suddenly emerges brightly before the viewer, like an epiphany.
The indistinct mass, originating from a melting pot of substances, then assumes multiple meanings. Simultaneously, the piece is three-dimensional and dimensionless because of its halo and reflection that dazzle the viewer. It is also a meteorite on a small scale, as meteorites are compacted space debris, while reminding us of the philosopher's stone: the philosopher's stone was the core of alchemical research for centuries, embodying enlightenment and perfection, the mysterious element capable of turning base metals into gold.
“Albedo” is therefore as multifaceted as its components: Cecilia and Sofia Nercasseau Gibson want us to think about the meaning of discovery and mystery within everyday matter. They want us to go blindly into the darkness, to become blind and, finally, to see.
Elisa Rusca.