Do something with light

For the new wing at its headquarters in Wevelgem, designed by Govaert & Vanhoutte, Delta Light invites four Belgian and British artists to “make something beautiful with light”.

West Flanders based family business Delta Light inaugurated the new wing of their headquarters, designed by Govaert & Vanhoutte – who were also responsible for the project of the original building in 2005 – with the aim to create a space that is technological but also emotional.

In order to connect the original builing (9,40 metres high) and the new one (26 metres high) Vanhoutte chose to integrate a transparent, projecting volume into the transition: something transparent and visible from far away, which also had a presence at night, always open to the surrounding landscape.

**Top**: Tom Dekyvere, *Digital Jungle*. **Above**: Damiaan Vanhoutte, Delta Light headquarters, Wevelgem, Belgium

This glass volume, that forms a counterpoint for the massive black architecture of the headquarters, also hosts the first of the four installations commissioned by Paul Amellot, founder of Delta Light, to Belgian and British artists.

In his Digital Jungle, young Belgian artist Tom Dekyvere – known as Them Sculptures – incorporates 2 km of fluorescent cord, onto which light is projected. In this way he visually expresses the contrast between the natural and the artificial, technological world. “In the production analogue and digital, humans and robots, go hand in hand. The connection with the new building is also important, because the projecting glass volume in which the work is installed suggests a sort of museum/greenhouse, created to ‘cultivate’ the work.”

Going down in the new extension we can find Fred Eerdekens’ 7 metres long work Shine. “The sculpture itself does not shine. On the contrary, it is a matte object that absorbs all light. Only its shadow is legible. This contradiction is an ongoing theme in my work. You can also associate ‘shine’ with the Dutch word schijnen, ‘to appear’. Something that is not what it appears. There again you have that constant uncertainty, and the duality between light and shadow. What’s more, as an artist, I always stay in the background and let the work speak for itself.”

Fred Eerdekens, <i>Shine</i> — Fred Eerdekens, *Shine*

Shine is followed by the installation conceived by London-based illustrator Ian Wright, who took the Lighting Bible (the company’s massive catalogue) as a starting point. “It’s the first time that I’ve used a catalogue as raw material. So for me, the commission was a challenge to develop new methods of working. The paper has a specific character and there's a tremendous variation in colour tones. The inspiration photos could be understood as light in a kind of static, printed form. Just like a painter, I worked layer by layer to create a playful, larger than life – 90 cm wide and 120 cm tall – portrait of founder Paul Ameloot.”

A the end of the journey we can find Chromaphagia, the installation created by the British ‘culinary wonderboys’ Bompas & Parr. “This installation is an expression of our philosophy that space changes our experience of taste. We invite visitors to eat the same food in three different atmospheres, so as to experience the way the flavour is affected by light, colour and sound. Since light is a crucial element in creating atmosphere, it is the primary ingredient. What’s more, by controlling the light, we can not only create an experience, but we can also control how the visitors feel about it. Light is therefore essential to our experience. After all, according to the science of synaesthesia, our senses mutually interact,” explains Harry Parr.