eye-shaped installation by brut deluxe brightly looks at people in madrid

IRIS by Brut Deluxe

Holidays are coming, and Brut Deluxe joins the spirit of the season with its public eye-shaped installation named IRIS where a bundle of lights hangs over Plaza Canalejas in Madrid, Spain. The red and blue strings look at the locals and tourists as they wander around the square, emitting a soft glow to light up their paths and surroundings.

The site-specific and commissioned light installation towers with a diameter of 50 meters and rises nine meters above the ground. From above, the eye light looks like a crater, but as soon as the drone zooms in, the once inanimate object comes to life as the light intensifies and the flickering adds realistic details to the installation.

images courtesy of Brut Deluxe | all photos by ImagenSubliminal ( Miguel de Guzmán / Rocío Romero)

The mesh of red and blue lights that Brut Deluxe threads around IRIS creates the illusion of a giant iris floating in space. It dilates as flecks of flickering lights are added along the lines. The installation team shares that its work of art can be scrutinized either as a close-up or vice versa.

‘Like the image of a distant galaxy,’ as the team likes to put it. The red and blue light ropes define the radial grooves, while an array of vertically placed light bulbs and spheres determine the freckles, wrinkles, and other nuances of the iris.

close-up of IRIS by Brut Deluxe in madrid

The installation extends over 2,000 square meters with the LED light ropes having a total length of two kilometers. The team writes that the two spheres have a diameter of 1 meter and constantly change color. A total of 102,600 LEDs are installed in all the lighting elements, but the team states that the energy consumption of the entire installation is only 2.1kW/h.

over 100,000 LEDS were used for the temporary installation

details of the string lights

a globe of red lights

boomerang-shaped lighting

project info:

name: IRIS

design: Brut Deluxe / Ben Busche

team: Philip Baumann, Elisa Luda

location: Plaza Canalejas in Madrid, Spain

year: 2022

photography + video: ImagenSubliminal ( Miguel de Guzmán / Rocío Romero)

drone operator: Juan Manuel Herrero / alquilerdronesmadrid 

status: temporary/ built