Alberto Garutti works living at the rhythm of thunderstorms
Each time a lightning flash is detected in Italy, the Studio Alberto Garutti installations light up instantly. These projects, permanent or temporary, transform this natural phenomenon into a visual experience between art and science.
When lightning becomes light
For several years, we have collaborated with Studio Alberto Garutti. The Italian artist, who passed away in 2023, designed a series of works connected to real-time lightning detection. Linked to our lightning sensor network, these installations light up instantly every time a lightning flash is detected over Italian territory.
Permanent or temporary, these works are now visible in Italy and internationally. They offer a different way of perceiving thunderstorms: no longer as a distant phenomenon, but as a living, shared signal.
A subtle dialogue between natural phenomena and human perception, to which we are proud to contribute by providing real-time data.
The exhibitions
Studio Alberto Garutti
Temporary exhibition – December 2025 to April 2026
MUSEU PARANAENSE - Céu‑Eclipse
At the crossroads of contemporary art, science and ecology, Céu‑Eclipse questions our relationship to time, climate and atmosphere.
In this international exhibition, meteorology becomes language.
Thunderstorms and eclipses express themselves like a perceptible sound, connecting humans and non-humans within a shared celestial envelope.
The works dialogue with the museum’s scientific disciplines, blurring the boundaries between past and present, instant and long duration.
Temporary exhibition – 4 to 28 February 2026
Garage BENTIVOGLIO Alberto Garutti – Temporali
Each lightning flash hitting Italy modifies the intensity of an internal light system.
The phenomenon happens elsewhere, out of sight, leaving the viewer free to imagine their own sky, their own thunderstorm.
Unlike monumental works rooted in the desert, Temporali blends into everyday life, discreetly, like a fragile and poetic signal.
A work that may appear without witnesses, or disappear if thunderstorms were to fade away.
Dedicated to those who pass by… and think of the sky.
Permanent installation – since 2022
Genagricola – Ca’ Corniani
In the cultivated plains of Ca’ Corniani, a luminous inscription crosses the landscape. Written by hand by Alberto Garutti, it appears as a sentence laid upon the land, readable both up close and from afar.
Each time a lightning strike is detected in Italy, its light briefly pulses. A subtle heartbeat connecting earth and sky.
Designed as a landscape caption, the work invites the viewer to look up and consider the atmosphere as a living presence. A shared present moment across an entire territory.
© Agostino Osio / AltoPiano
Permanent installation – since October 2023
MAXXI – Roma
Installed on the façade of MAXXI, Temporali unfolds like a luminous sentence above the city.
Each lightning flash detected in Italy briefly increases the intensity of the inscription. The thunderstorm, invisible, becomes perceptible.
The work establishes a direct link between natural energy and everyday experience. It does not only detect the thunderstorm: it reveals it.
Here, art acts as a silent mediator between humans and the world, reminding us that the sky, even when distant, concerns us all.
© Melania Dalle Grave- DSL Studio, courtesy Fondazione MAXXI
Works “dedicated to those who, passing by, think of the sky”
We wanted to pay a final tribute to Alberto Garutti, Italian artist, teacher and intellectual.
Our paths crossed around the work Temporali, within the Tre Soglie project at Ca’ Corniani. A work made of light and data, delicately questioning the link between art and nature.
We thank Alberto and Studio Alberto Garutti for this valuable collaboration.
