Kitty Kraus’ exhibition at the Kunstverein München is devoted to a single new work by the artist: a seemingly endless path. A mirror lit from behind casts a long, black shadow across the floor. For this shadow to condense into a perfectly straight trail, and for that trail to continue in a straight line in the reflection, the light in the installation must behave in a way that artificial light normally does not.
Sunlight achieves this almost effortlessly, since its rays reach the earth nearly parallel from a great distance. A lamp lacks this distance: because it is close to what it illuminates, its rays fan out from a single point, so the shadow it casts also spreads apart.