Grammars of Light brings together the practices of three artists that transform the spaces of Astrup Fearnley Museet with immersive installations. Cerith Wyn Evans, Ann Lislegaard, and P. Staff manipulate artificial light—technologies such as digital projectors, electrified neon gas and programmable LEDs—to viscerally impact and choreograph the movement of visitors. Their works dynamically respond to the surrounding architecture as well as incorporate references to other built forms and structures. Light columns are duplicated in the museum’s glass ceiling, crystalline forms consume a modernist building, and holographic fans form a corridor of intense luminosity. 

Art has long been concerned with the representation of light, yet it wasn’t until the 1920s with the advent of mass-produced artificial lighting that it was used as an artistic medium. This use intensified in the 1960s and 1970s by artists associated with minimalism and postminimalism. With an awareness of these traditions, Evans, Lislegaard and Staff nevertheless create associations that go beyond the strict seriality and phenomenology of minimalism. Their works draw upon the expressive potential of lighting technologies, and through allusion and implication, social and political concerns also emerge. Crucial to all three practices is a blurring of distinctions between interior and exterior, be they spatial, bodily, or psychological. In this way, singular ideas of space and subjectivity give way to ambiguity and more open associations. The means to describe encounters with these works are similarly fraught, as texts from science fiction, social theory, and poetry, which appear as literal text, morse code, or conceptual scaffolding, are made strange through translation and manipulation. 

Grammars of Light is organized in parallel with Henie Onstad’s exhibition Ann Lislegaard (09. januar. 2026 – 19. april. 2026). A joint public program will provide visitors with an opportunity to engage with the artist’s practice in depth across two institutions.

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