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THE SUBLIME ESSENCE OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS
Concepts of Dualism and Unity in Contemporary Art and Design

The theme of the 15th edition of the Florence Biennale, which will be held from 18 to 26 October 2025, is dedicated to the primordial, eternal union between light and darkness, which has always been at the centre of artistic, as well as scientific, philosophical and literary research. Object of study and reflection by many of the most brilliant minds in the history of humanity, from Heraclitus, Pythagoras and Aristotle to Leonardo da Vinci and Galileo Galilei, up to Newton, Maxwell and Einstein, light has always represented not only a physical phenomenon, but also a concept which is at the basis of life itself and which connects the macrocosm and the microcosm, pushing us to meditate on the connections between what happens in our limited and fragile terrestrial world and what is inherent in the immensity of universe. Architectural works of ancient civilizations, such as Stonehenge, the Mayan temples and the pyramids of Giza, have demonstrated the attention and devotion of our ancestors towards sunlight for a long time, and the latter – which represents the most obvious and tangible manifestation of the luminous phenomena on our planet – has continued to be the focus of artists, architects, scientists and writers in all subsequent civilizations and in all known eras.

Metaphor of the divine, good, knowledge, and life, light is often contrasted, especially in Western culture, with darkness, which has been perceived as a symbol of evil, unknown, and death. Light, however, cannot be understood or perceived without darkness itself, together with which it forms an archetypal dualism to which opposing but complementary elements can be traced back: day and night, heat and cold, good and evil. If already in ancient Greece, Heraclitus considered becoming as a continuous conflict of opposites that are not mutually exclusive but act simultaneously in harmony, even earlier, in China, "The Book of Changes", considered by Confucius to be a book of wisdom, stated through the principles of Yin and Yang that the interdependence between the two polarities is manifest in all aspects of nature. Everything has its opposite and everything contains the seed (or a small part) of its opposite. Opposites have a mutual origin and one cannot exist without the other. Expansion and contraction. Order and disorder. Male and female. Day and night. Light and darkness. Good and evil.

The principle that indicates this unitary root of the multiple totality, in reality, was already discussed in the "Ṛgveda", the oldest text of Indian civilization (around the second millennium BC). This concept, which arrived in the West thanks to the teachings of the Egyptian priests with whom Pythagoras had been admitted to study, finds its graphic expression in the circle with the dot in the centre, or the hieroglyph of the word Ra, the divine principle of the Sun. Centuries later, Plotinus, founder of Neoplatonism, uses light to help us understand the way in which the One is dispersed in multiplicity, establishing a dialectical relationship of mutual complementarity with it: he compares the One to a light source that diffuses into the darkness its own light, which tends to fade as it moves away. However, the two extremes, light and darkness, are only one, because there is no source of darkness.

Behind multiplicity, unity always hides. And it is precisely unity that elevates us, pushing us towards higher ideals, until we reach the first and infinite One, as defined by Plotinus. The One that creates being in various forms and modalities by emanation. The One we can reunite with through the five stages defined by Plotinus himself: civil virtues, art, love, philosophy, ecstasy. Art, in particular, would be necessary for the soul to undertake the path towards the One, according to a concept that reverberates throughout the Roman era as well as in subsequent eras and in particular during the Renaissance. Art as a representation not only of natural beauty, but also of something superior, immaterial, transcendental, bringing out the beauty of unity in multiplicity, thanks to the particular perspective with which artists cast their gazes on the things they represent and interpret.

“The Sublime Essence of Light and Darkness” is therefore aimed at underlining the ability of art, as well as architecture and design, to give emotional awareness of the infinity and irresistible power of nature, a dimension in which opposites intertwine spontaneously, just as in society we can instead detect dramatic contrasts, such as wars, which make us lose sight of the meaning of our very existence.

The theme therefore leads to a reflection on the need to understand what seems opposite to us and which is instead part of a unitary system: our human race, our planet, our universe. A unitary system that requires our utmost care and at the basis of which there can only be mutual recognition and respect, dialogue and peace, which have always constituted the fundamental principles of the Florence Biennale.

© Florence Biennale 2024