XV Florence Biennale

Title and text by Giovanni Cordoni

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 October 18 to 26, 2025, is dedicated to the primordial and eternal union between light and darkness, a union that has always been at the center of artistic, as well as scientific, philosophical, and literary research. The object of study and reflection of many of the most brilliant minds in the history of humanity, from Heraclitus, Pythagoras, and Aristotle to Leonardo da Vinci and Galileo, to Newton, Maxwell, and Einstein, light has always represented not only a physical phenomenon, but also a concept that is at the basis of life itself and connects the macrocosm and the microcosm. It encourages us to meditate on the connections between what happens in our limited and fragile terrestrial world and what belongs to the immensity of the universe. The architectural works of ancient civilizations, such as Stonehenge, the Mayan temples, and the pyramids of Giza, have long revealed our ancestors' attention to and devotion to the sun, which—the most obvious and tangible manifestation of light phenomena on our planet—has continued to be the focus of interest for artists, architects, scientists, and writers in all subsequent civilizations and in all known eras.

A metaphor for the divine, good, knowledge, and life, light is often contrasted, especially in Western culture, with darkness, perceived as a symbol of evil, the unknown, and death. However, light cannot be understood or perceived without darkness itself, with which it constitutes an archetypal dualism that refers to opposing but complementary elements: day and night, hot and cold, good and evil. Already in ancient Greece, Heraclitus considered becoming as a continuous conflict of opposites that are not mutually exclusive but act simultaneously in harmony. And even earlier, in China, "The Book of Transformations," considered by Confucius to be a book of wisdom, affirmed 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 common origin, and one cannot exist without the other. Expansion and contraction. Order and disorder. Masculine and feminine. Day and night. Light and dark. Good and evil.

The principle revealing this unitary root of multiplicity was in fact already evoked in the "Ṛgveda," the oldest text of Indian civilization (around the 2nd 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 a dot in the center, or hieroglyph of the word Ra, divine principle of the Sun. Centuries later, Plotinus, founder of Neoplatonism, uses light to help us understand how the One disperses into multiplicity, establishing with it a dialectical relationship of mutual complementarity: he compares the One to a luminous source that diffuses its own light into the darkness, which tends to fade as it moves away. Yet the two extremes, light and darkness, are one, because there is no source of darkness.

Behind multiplicity, unity always remains hidden. And it is precisely unity that elevates us, pushing us towards higher ideals, until we reach the first and infinite One, as Plotinus defined it. The One that creates being in various forms and modalities through emanation. The One with which we can reunite through the five stages defined by Plotinus himself: civil virtues, art, love, philosophy, ecstasy. Art, in particular, would appear necessary for the soul to undertake this path towards the One—a concept that resonates throughout the Roman era, as well as in later periods and especially in the Renaissance. Art as a representation not only of natural beauty, but also of something higher, immaterial, transcendental, expressing the beauty of unity in multiplicity thanks to the particular gaze with which artists observe and interpret what they represent.

"The Sublime Essence of Light and Darkness" therefore aims to highlight the capacity of art, as well as architecture and design, to convey an emotional awareness of the infinity and irresistible power of nature, a dimension where opposites spontaneously intertwine, while human society, on the contrary, reveals dramatic contrasts, such as wars, which make us lose sight of the very meaning of our existence.

The theme therefore leads to a reflection on the need to understand what seems to us to be opposed but is in reality part of a unitary system: our human species, our planet, our universe. A unitary system that requires our greatest care and at the base of which can only exist mutual recognition and respect, dialogue and peace, which have always been the fundamental principles of the Florence Biennale.

© Florence Biennale 2024]