impalpable

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The Physicality of Light by Barbara Kasten

Impalpable is a curated exhibition centered on the concept of light and color. Artist, Barbara Kasten combines her passion with stage lighting and immerses her viewers into her world through a fully interactive museum experience.

^ROLES exhibition design
interaction design
art direction

Function

Barbara Kasten has been making work for almost 40 years, and is pushing into the contemporary art space with installation and video.

Solution

Curate an exhibition showcasing the process of Barbara Kasten chronologically through time. Incorporate experiential and interactive design to bring her work to life in and out of the art museum. Copy-write narrative statements, exhibition plans and marketing to create a buzz around her work.

Experience Narrative

Impalpable: The Physicality of Light

Barbara Kasten creates photographs by sculpting light. She assembles objects, colored acrylics and stage lighting to produce work that uses light as a material. Throughout the exhibit, the viewer will walk through and be able to engage with her work and it’s physicality.

To begin curating a museum experience, a mood board was developed in mind of disorder and relief. With the artist’s range of materials and colors, it was easy for visitors to feel overstimulated. Splitting the exhibition space into different sections allows visitors to take information in slowly and learn more about the artist’s process.

Exhibition Floor Plans

We chose the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum specifically with Barbara Kasten in mind. The angled architecture, large open windows and geometric materials found on the exterior echo materials in her work. This museum itself functioned as a part of her studio work which recently includes projection mapping. The space includes a loft where we were able to breathe more life into her complex compositions.

We took an experiential approach to marketing for Kasten. The exterior space of the Broad Art Museum is lit nightly with a variety of gradating colors found in her work. Bus-wraps featured the “Impalpable” graphics to bring those on transit by the museum space and entice them into coming.

User Interactive

From the second floor, the museum visitor becomes the user, as they become aware of the ability to change the throws of light and color of the space around them.

The reader rail facing the showcase gives a step by step on-boarding of an app that the visitor can use to change the space. This is a birds eye view of the immersive world below and invites the visitor to take photos of their own. On the right wall is a work of art that was made from the same process of throwing light and color onto an object. works like these can be found in the space across from the loft in the architectural-driven part of the exhibition.