Exhibition “BLACK LIGHT”: New Chapter at DUBS

Opening this spring at DUBS in Zurich, Black Light brings together works by Christian Herdeg, David Renggli, Esther Mathis, Anne Morgenstern, Shirana Shahbazi and Peter Regli. The group exhibition marks a new chapter for the institution and sets the tone for its renewed program. Across photography, abstraction, and spatial construction, the artists explore the subtle ways in which light is generated, perceived, and transformed.

artist CHRISTIAN HERDEG

The exhibition takes its title from the physical concept of the blackbody, an ideal object that absorbs all incoming radiation. Paradoxically, this perfect absorber is also the most complete emitter of light. What appears black, in other words, is not empty but saturated with potential—gathering both visible and invisible energy before releasing it again as radiance. Darkness, in this formulation, is not the opposite of light but its precondition.

Something of this principle governs the works on view. A photographic surface holds light like a trace, a memory of an encounter between material and atmosphere. Constructed forms redirect luminosity into geometry and rhythm. Across the exhibition, darkness functions less as absence than as concentration: a state in which the surrounding world—its images, its instability, its excess of information—is absorbed and gradually transformed.

Within this context, Black Light gestures toward a broader cultural intuition. In unsettled times, societies often return to art—not because art resolves uncertainty but because it offers another orientation toward it. Creation stands, quietly but persistently, against destruction. Illumination becomes both a visual phenomenon and a metaphor: the possibility that meaning may emerge from darkness rather than in spite of it.

The exhibition also signals a new phase for DUBS. Founded by the Thomas Dubs Foundation and grounded in the artistic and pedagogical work of Thomas Dubs, the institution is dedicated to the exploration of creativity through contemporary artistic practice, interdisciplinary exchange, and public engagement.

artist ESTHER MATHIS

artist ESTHER MATHIS

DUBS approaches art less as a finished object than as an ongoing process of research. Its program includes exhibitions, performances, sound-based works, and discursive formats that bring artistic practice into dialogue with scientific and pedagogical perspectives. In doing so, the institution creates connections between historical positions and contemporary artistic inquiry.

collab project by SHIRANA SHAHBAZI and ANNE MORGENSTERN

Its profile is shaped by the integration of exhibition space, acoustic experimentation, and public conversation. Sound, spatial investigation, and dialogue form essential parts of its framework. Through collaborations with artists, researchers, and educational institutions—including technical and art universities—DUBS positions artistic practice as a site where perception, knowledge, and cultural exchange intersect.

With Black Light, the institution begins again with a modest proposition: that attention itself can be transformative. Like the blackbody invoked in the exhibition’s title, the capacity to absorb—to remain open and receptive—may also be the capacity to radiate. In this sense, light does not arrive from elsewhere. It appears slowly, through the act of looking.