The Illuminated Cave. Dale Chihully’s Exhilarating Shadows
Of the objects which are being carried in like manner,
they would only see the shadows. To them, the truth would
be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.1
—Plato, Allegory of the Cave
On the spot. June, 2013
After having been welcomed by The Sun, a flamboyant work installed on the steps to the Hornstein Pavilion on Sherbrooke Street, visitors entering the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts are led into Dale Chihuly’s fabulous world in which imposing glass sculptures, some translucent others opaque, project luminous shadows onto the walls, floor and ceiling. Shadows that make a mockery of the dark mirages of Plato’s cave and the gloomy chiaroscuros that ensued throughout art history. As bright and captivating as the structures themselves, they are an integral part of the unusual architectonic space in which mirroring objects and images converse in an exhilarating echo.
On both sides of the mirror, light and colour do their work, and one can only be delighted by the exuberant multi-coloured reflections. Even the gigantic semi-transparent orange flowers, mounted on a white grid on both sides of the Hornstein Pavilion’s majestic staircase, are nothing but joyous shadows of themselves, just like their twins that are piled up above the false ceiling of an alcove that they endow with an atmosphere reminiscent of the sumptuous Persian divans of the Thousand and One Nights. Thanks to a refined lighting design in each room, it is precisely this reciprocal
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