Astra brings together works by Diogo Evangelista and Max Bill (1908-1994), establishing a dialogue around light, color and perception.

At the genesis for the project are the lithographs of Max Bill’s 16 Constellations – a portfolio published in 1974, whose title immediately evokes a cosmological dimension. Diogo Evangelista responds to these works with Astra, a previously unseen set of light fixtures situated between the utilitarian object and sculpture. This ambiguity evokes the Bauhaus, where Bill trained.

Beyond the obvious formal affinities, other overlapping and dissonant pursuits are revealed. While Bill worked within a rigid frame of guidelines to engage with the phenomenological, perceiving the world through mathematically pure, interconnected rules, Evangelista more often engages with the otherworldly and the metaphysical with equal exactitude.

This encounter turns consultório into an interstitial space, where color and electromagnetic radiation heighten the viewer’s perception, leading to a meditative state. Invisible universal laws become sensory awareness through immaterial three dimensionality, light reflection and intersecting lines. Through this interplay, Evangelista further elaborates on Bill’s interest in sensory perception.

Thus, the exhibition can be understood as a direct technological expansion and logical consequence of Bill’s phenomenological research, as well as the utopian ambitions 20th century modernism gave rise to.

Diogo Evangelista’s Astra is an edition of unique copies published by esculápio, the first to be integrated into the exhibition that spawned it and to which it also lends its title.