Pietra di Luce, Sabine Mirlesse

Pietra di Luce invites us into a geological reverie, from the depths of the earth to the immensity of the milky way and its stardust. The matrix of Sabine Mirlesse’s work, lies in this mineral material: these stones, fractures and crevices, these underground cathedrals and marble quarries of the Apuan alps in the north of Tuscany. It’s in this cloistered world, these “dark rooms” that she finds light. Literature, like many of her works, is a source of inspiration as well, and in this instance the Divine Comedy of Dante Alghieri, originally from the region. Like these three canticas, Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, Pietra di Luce begins in obscurity and travels into the light, only to return us into to the interstellar night. In Dante’s text, the earth is fixed at the center of the universe, around it move the planets, stars, and crystalline photosphere. Each of strata ends in the same word, Stelle. Stars. In carefully collecting pieces of the mountain, photographs, sketches and drawings. The work is constructed through experimentation and stratification. New forms take shape in her darkroom, photograms of stones, monotypes, negatives projected onto stones. She embosses prints and drawings with the use of a press, giving them volume. Sculptures are part of the work as well.

Quants Edition, nov 2019
Photographs: Sabine Mirlesse
Texts: Jean-Pierre Criqui & Federica Soletta
Hard cover
132 pages
23,5 mm x 28,8 cm
ISBN: 978-2-9568135-0-7

Part of a 220 limited edition (150 signed regular copies, 40 collectors editions copies with a signed print, 10 deluxe edition copies with a marble cover and 20 not-for-sale copies, property of the artist)