Fascinated by the artificial light and the technology behind it
Created: 02/11/2022, 18:08
By: Astrid Amelungse-Kurth
The repurposed glass vase with rainbow-colored LED lights is just one of László Rácz's art objects.
© Dagmar Rutt
Whether vase, coat hanger or colander: László Rácz presents recycled, luminous objects in Starnberg.
Starnberg
– fascination is one thing.
The other is a recycling idea.
It has always bothered László M. Rácz how many leftover luminaires were thrown away after installation.
So he collected everything that was not needed and assembled the various components into new lamps and light carriers.
Now they are on display in the studio of his Roseninsel artist colleague Paolo de Brito.
If you want to know how Rácz came to this very special recycling art, you have to look at his professional career.
Born in Hungary, he came to Starnberg in 1987.
He had already left his home country in 1971 to study color design and mechanical engineering at the Technical University of Darmstadt.
After excursions into exhaust gas turbocharger development and film development technology, he worked in the field of lighting planning for more than 20 years, including design, production and assembly.
"That's when I discovered my fascination for light," he says, beaming.
"How beautiful the artificial light is."
Glass ball on aluminum funnel
Technology and creativity: These are the two poles of Rácz's artistic work - although the technical aesthetics are by no means intended to be perfect.
"I don't want to design," emphasizes the light artist.
"The light sources should appear rough, not round." And so he sometimes uses stainless steel tea strainers, clothes hangers or pasta strainers for his light objects, which cast magical reflections on the wall when the spectral colors flow over the brickwork in a star shape or in waves.
So that everything doesn't get too pretty, sockets, lines and cables remain visible and deliberately break the aesthetics.
Colored fluorescent tubes become faces, as in the work "Colour Face", a gold-coated glass ball on a disused aluminum funnel for the "Golden Globe" and aluminum grids throw exciting light reflections on the wall,
that the artist associates it with the northern lights.
"Aurora Borealis" is then also installed on a mobile base and can be dimmed.
Recently it's even wireless.
In his most recent work, László Rácz converted a glass vase with LED lights into a transparent glass cylinder sparkling in rainbow colors, a work that, like the entire exhibition, is best viewed in the evening hours - when the play of light unfolds its full effect.
a.k
The exhibition by the light artist László Rácz can be seen in Paolo de Brito's studio at Bahnhofstraße 1-3 in Starnberg - until Sunday, February 20, from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.
The artist's wife, Iris Oberholz, is also exhibiting: she is presenting two paintings.
