Oasis Light Installation 2023

Some years ago there was a scorching hot day in the summer when I imagined myself walking in the sandy desert and wondering whether actually I see an Oasis or just hallucinating. And the same I'm on the endless sea or the ocean: is that an island I see or I’m just so exhausted that I’m seeing illusions. I wanted to create this illusion with non-figurative methods. I developed an optical concave lens with a given diameter and depth that creates the optical illusion, the colours change back and forth and flow into each other on the surface that the transforming gradient projected into it appears either concave or convex from certain perspectives. The mirage of an oasis emerging from the sandy desert is thus transformed into a vision of an island in an endless sea. The viewer’s gaze is bound to rest upon the subtle transformation of the optical illusion created by the slow, meditative waves of colour transitions.This gives the light a sort of lens body, the projection seems three-dimensional. I also aimed to give the illusion that the lens itself is glowing, more like a glowing celestial object, like the moon, which reflects sunlight, but seems to be glowing by itself. So I tried to convey this trippy hallucinogenic heatwave experience in the form of a light object.