Luminous Opera - Corridor Installation
Fluorescent acrylic, UV-programmed spotlight
Size: 6 x 2 x 3 m
Location: Swatch Flagship Store on the Bund, Shanghai
Year: 2025
Luminous Opera is an immersive glyphic installation by Kalman Pool, commissioned by Swatch and currently installed at their flagship store on the Bund, directly connected to the historic Swatch Art Peace Hotel. Stretching over six meters, the corridor envelops the viewer in a glowing script of 2,400 hand-painted characters—an invented pictographic language developed over a decade.
First conceived during Kalman's early years in Chicago as a student who "couldn’t paint," these glyphs embody his longing for a transnational, translingual, and transcendent visual system—one unbound by race, identity, or geography. The installation's ultraviolet palette and sacred symmetry evoke a dreamlike threshold, suggesting life forms beyond gravity, space, and time.
This work marks a pivotal evolution of the Luminous Opera series, transforming the intimate act of writing into a large-scale spatial experience. As visitors pass through the corridor, they are invited not merely to look, but to decode—to pause, imagine, and become part of a language that is alive, expanding, and still largely unread.
"It’s more than a corridor — it’s a portal. A place where art returns to its essence: to create a sacred, unrepeatable experience."