NEW YORK.- Italian artist Carlo Bernardini inaugurates a new Swing Space at 5 Hanover Square with his installation "Event Horizon". Working with a unique system of fiber optics, Bernardini creates a shifting, illusory network of illuminated lines that traverse the space in weblike formations. Viewers' processes of perception are challenged and overturned as they enter the created environment, experiencing it from within and without.

The title of this exhibit "Event Horizon" is inspired by the astronomer's definition of the black holes' boundary line in the cosmic space. Based on Bernardini's previous exhibits up to now, the "permeable spaces" and their inner void, the viewer's processes of perception of the black cosmic space and the "black holes" as "no place", a "point of no return" become part of an experimental visual challenge.

This life size installation consists of steel spheres of different diameter, variously arranged and linked together by optic fibers. The interaction of the spheres and optic fibers allow the light to become the premier element for the visual language of this created environment.

His is a form of creativity that works on the basis of a code of modifications in space reflecting variants produced by light. So much is confirmed by the present research of Carlo Bernardini, who handles light and shade like materials and substances, using electro-luminescent surfaces and optical fibers with internal lighting in a context of total darkness.

In these works with interior and exterior environmental light installations, the optical superimposition of lines traversing a space and lines running along the planes of the same space, viewed from a certain position, can produce two-dimensional visual conditions.

Closing one eye, transforming it into a single lens, the image becomes two-dimensional; as soon as the viewpoint shifts volumetric changes come about, generating mirror image-forms. The first impression is not of the optical fibers themselves, but rather of transparent plates of glass lit up along the sides. The optical fibers only reveal the empty space they enclose in a subsequent phase of perception. The observer can enter into a sort of illusory space, experiencing the installation from within and without.

Carlo Bernardini was born in Viterbo in 1966 and obtained his diploma at the Fine Arts Academy in Rome in 1987. In 1997 he wrote the theoretical essay on "The division of visual unity", which was published by Stampa Alternativa. In 2000 and 2005 he received a grant "Overseas Grantee" from the Pollock - Krasner Foundation of New York, and in 2002 the prize Targetti Art Light Collection “White Sculpture”.

He has created and installed permanent public sculptures in stainless steel and optic fibres in various Italian cities. He currently teaches at the Fine Arts Academy of “Brera” in Milan. He lives and works both in Rome and Milan.