Blackout
Simon Starling / SUPERFLEX
Simon Starling / SUPERFLEX
Blackout, 2009
52 metal lamps, light bulbs
45 x 50 x 50 cm (each)
Overall dimensions variable
TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection
Installation views: Simon Starling in collaboration with SUPERFLEX – Reprototypes, Triangulations and Road Tests, TBA21 – Augarten, 2012
Photo: Jakob Polacsek / TBA21, 2012 | © VEGAP, Madrid, 2026
Simon Starling | SUPERFLEX
Blackout. Copies of a "blackout lamp" designed in 1942 by Poul Henningsen for the Tivoli amusement park in Copenhagen, 2009
52 metal lamps, light bulbs
45 x 50 x 50 cm (each)
Overall dimensions variable
Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection
Installation view: Simon Starling | SUPERFLEX: Reprototypes, Triangulations and Road Tests, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna, Austria, 2012
Photo: Jakob Polacsek | TBA21 | © VEGAP, Madrid, 2026
Simon Starling | SUPERFLEX
Blackout. Copies of a "blackout lamp" designed in 1942 by Poul Henningsen for the Tivoli amusement park in Copenhagen, 2009
52 metal lamps, light bulbs
45 x 50 x 50 cm (each)
Overall dimensions variable
Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection
Installation view: Simon Starling | SUPERFLEX: Reprototypes, Triangulations and Road Tests, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna, Austria, 2012
Photo: Jakob Polacsek | TBA21 | © VEGAP, Madrid, 2026
- Date
- 2010
- Medium
- 52 metal lamps, light bulbs
- Dimension
- 45 x 50 x 50 cm (each) Overall dimensions variable
- Credit
TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection
- This artwork is part of the donation and long-term loan from TBA21 to the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza.
Details
This collaborative project originally produced at Kunsthallen Brandts in Odense, Denmark, in 2009 took as its starting point a lamp designed in 1942 by Danish designer Poul Henningsen for the amusement park Tivoli.
Consisting of multiple closely packed black shades that allowed no light to spill upwards into the sky, the “blackout lamp” was designed with the soul purpose of keeping Tivoli open regardless of the prohibitions on light imposed during the Second World War. In the former factory that now houses Kunsthallen Brandts, a metal-workshop was established in an otherwise completely dark series of exhibition spaces. Over a period of 3 months, with the help of local volunteers, over 70 lamps were produced and hung one by one in a grid around the exhibition space, slowly illuminating the museum.