Luminous Habitats: lit windows, from Baudelaire to today
Dinelli's Luminous Habitats: buildings at night, an oil-painted scene behind every window, on backlit plexiglass. An idea that goes back to Baudelaire.
In “Windows”, a prose poem from Paris Spleen, Baudelaire writes that whoever looks in from outside through an open window never sees as much as whoever looks at a closed one. Dinelli starts from the same fascination: windows lit at night, and all the lives they shelter.
Looking in on the neighbours
“Who has never been curious enough to glance, in the evening, at the lit window of the neighbour across the street? I dared,” the artist writes. After the Habitats on crumpled canvas, since 2023 she has been looking at the same buildings from outside, at night, imagining the lives of the people who live there.
How the work is made
Each window is a small scene painted in oil. The scenes are scanned, assembled and worked digitally, then printed on translucent plexiglass. Standard LED panels light the work from behind. Dinelli signs with an old pastel from her Paris Rooftops series, which she slips into the apartment of an art lover.
The works
The series includes Habitats 104, a tower at night, Habitats 105, in six bays, Habitats 106, a long building, and Habitats 107, a square façade.
The whole series is gathered in Luminous Habitats.
Text: Dinelli studio. Quotations: the artist's own writings.
New works
An occasional letter, when a new series or an exhibition is coming. Nothing else.