MOOS fine art Gallery is pleased to announce Poems of Light, a solo exhibition by the Swiss artist Christian Herdeg (*1942).

A celebrated pioneer of light art, Herdeg has worked with light and luminous materials since the early 1970s. He creates linear sculptural constructions and vibrant chromatic installations that explore the emotional and spatial possibilities of light. This style is referred to as Lyrical Minimalism.

In Poems of Light, Herdeg continues his lifelong exploration of light as both a substance and a metaphor. The exhibition invites viewers to engage with the works and the perceptual and emotional resonances they evoke. In new and recent works, Herdeg combines these qualities with striking arrangements of glowing tubes, mirrored surfaces, and translucent planes. Working primarily with the glow and aura of neon and argon, Herdeg’s pieces exist between painting and sculpture, perception and experience. They appear minimal yet proportional and precise yet deeply atmospheric.

Light has been central to Herdeg’s practice since childhood, when he first began building miniature stages and illuminating them with small light bulbs. A formative moment came later in New York when he visited a glassblowing workshop and discovered the expressive potential of glass and gas as artistic media. Fascinated by their interaction, he began experimenting with colored tubes and different gas mixtures, developing his own palette of over 250 custom-made hues — each created by coating the interior of the glass with luminous pigment, an expensive and time-intensive process that allows for intricate chromatic control.

Composing visual poems in light, Herdeg’s work is both technical and contemplative, balancing intensity with restraint. “Life is contradictary,” the artist says, “that’s why I like the interplay of reduction and opulence.” This clarity and sense of order are central to his approach: through measured proportions and controlled radiance, Herdeg has developed a distinctive vocabulary based on colour, geometry and the fundamental emittance of orchestrated light.

Christian Herdeg was born in Zürich 1942 and is considered a pioneer of Swiss light art. After studying in Zurich and working in Montreal and New York, he began working with neon and fluorescent light in 1971.

His works are internationally recognised, and his pieces are held in numerous major public and private collections as well as featured in several public art projects worldwide. In 2016, the Museum Haus Konstruktiv in Zurich dedicated a large retrospective to his work. In 2021 he received the Culture Award of the City of Zurich. The Museum Ritter (Waldenbuch, Germany) is currently exhibiting artworks by Christian Herdeg.