Kasia Stefanczyk: Light Experiences Zero Time
4 July - 1 August 2026
Often, light is associated with the ethereal, the transient, the loosely dissolving. In Kasia Stefanczyk’s new body of work, ‘Light Experiences Zero Time’, light is a structural force that reveals presence and density. Here, something settles - shadows and shimmery grains of texture capture the instability of things - the wind, the appearance of objects, and most importantly, the passage of time.
Continuing her exploration of light through the medium of painting, Stefanczyk brings together paintings created between October 2025 and May 2026, each timestamped with a particular observation of a particular moment when light passes through an object in space. Her paintings, then, tease out how light, alongside its co-conspirator, shadow or darkness, reflects time.
The works are as much about the immediate and observable physical expressions of inner states - our relationship to space and time - as much as they are about process. Through a kind of inversion of her usual process, which she reflected on as a process of finding light, she turns her attention to revealing light. Previously, Stefanczyk built up compositions by adding layers of paint, sharp and defined geometric shapes stacked to capture the qualities of light. The process was one of accumulation, of finding light by placing it.
In ‘Light Experiences Zero Time’, rather than building up a composition by adding, she begins with a thick, layered surface and reveals the painting by sanding it back. The canvas is covered entirely in a deep, warm tone, and once dense enough, traces of the composition are revealed by sanding away the areas where the light fell. What begins as a solid layer of paint ends with marks of lighter hues exposed through a rigorous process of friction. Light that was already present and left its mark is uncovered.
In some instances, Light Painting 8 October 2025 10:02 - 15 October 2025 9:26, the surface appears worn, thereby exposing the dust and detritus gathered along the way. These paintings show minuscule changes that implant themselves as objects are used and interacted with. This is a kind of compositional documentation of the passage of time through illumination.
Conceptually, the work operates within the traditions of Light and Space movements (such as that of 1960s California) in which artists treated light as a material in its own right, capable of shaping perception and experience. Within this frame, light defines form and alters how space is felt. But here too she insists on duration, tracing specific moments of an ephemeral quality held in place by the physical act of marking. Through this process, Stefanczyk creates a temporal boundary for a thing that has none. Light is lengthened as an experience… recorded, imprinted and expressed over time.
‘Light Experiences Zero Time’ reflects how painting can be a modality for the embodiment of light. In turn, it reflects on what illumination does to the basic ideas of how time appears and its implications for memory and experience.
— Text by Nkgopoleng Moloi