story of light

Light is life-giving. For one thing, visual art is impossible without it. Through light the convexities and concavities of a marble sculpture marvel, the turbulent swirls of hues stir one's emotions, the piercing gaze is captured into a frame. In the works of the Dutch painters whom I admire the most, such as Vermeer, Van Gogh and Rembrandt, the so-called "magicians of light", light elevates everyday life into a sacred moment of tranquility or drama. But it was only after I came to Amsterdam, when I stepped into a conversation with the curator of Allard Pierson museum, that I learned that the Netherlands was fatefully bound to be the land of silver lighting. The flat landscape of the country forms low-hanging clouds, which sets light into a perpetual bouncing between the sky and the equally infinitely stretching earth— what Vincent refers to as the "eternity's gate" in the 2018 film.

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While light is life-giving, it shines equally upon things that are talking or mute, moving or still, growing or decaying, or for most things, both at different times. When describing how the world is like any given moment, we say that it is in a certain “light”.

 

Walking on the streets at 6pm, receiving the sun-dusted wind on my face, I get the impression that the world is made salient and vivid through my bodily senses, as though it is light that transforms into colors through the glass prism that is myself. If I am lucky, I turn a little more transparent, a bit lighter on my feet, than the previous days. Light becomes a language, a poem. Here, you will partake in a journey, where light is both the medium and the narrator of the story.