«La notte»: Lorenzo Gecchelin at Fabbrica del Vapore
At Milan Design Week 2026, Lorenzo Gecchelin takes part in La notte, the exhibition in darkness at Fabbrica del Vapore, presenting an installation that reveals itself only through its shadow.
During Milan Design Week 2026, from 21 to 25 April, the Spazio Cisterne at Fabbrica del Vapore hosted La notte, a group exhibition poised between design and art. Open only at night, from 10 pm to 5 am, it presented works installed in darkness, to be discovered solely by the light of visitors’ phones.
Among the invited designers, Lorenzo Gecchelin presented an installation conceived specifically for the exhibition. Its point of departure is a phrase attributed to Leonardo da Vinci: “Darkness lights the stars.”
The letters of the phrase are fixed horizontally on the wall, invisible in the darkness. When visitors switch on the light of their phones, their shadows stretch across the wall and the message emerges. Just as darkness lights the stars in Leonardo’s phrase, here light creates the shadow that renders the message readable.