Chaim van Luit – Via Lucis, 2017

Some scientists think it is possible to travel through time. Usually, when we consider the potential scenarios for time travel, we encounter the idea that the future time traveller interferes with the past, and that that past is predestined, as it were, to bring about the future. Is this a result of the ‘prior knowledge’ that we have? In his solo presentation ‘Via Lucis’, Chaim van Luit (1985, Heerlen, NL) speculates about the past, present and future by interconnecting various time lines in parallel universes. Anyone who sees his spectacular yet intimate installation of works in diverse media can endorse what scientists claim: time travel is possible!

The surroundings of Maastricht, where Chaim van Luit lives, are a veritable treasure-house of artefacts that attest to the presence of ancient peoples such as the Celts, the Eburones and the Romans. Nearly every day he happens to cross some important trading route of the Romans in South Limburg. Van Luit followed the traces of this route, and the ‘discoveries’ that he made while doing so make up the point of departure for the exhibition titled ‘Via Lucis’ (Way of Light). Time and history are linked by his ‘shedding of light’ on these finds. A photographic work in the exhibition shows, for instance, a spider which, caught in a drop of resin from a conifer roughly forty million years ago, remained preserved for eternity. Dangling above this ancient specimen captured in amber is a second – modern day – spider.