Higher Power

Higher Power

San Clemente Palace, Venice

 
Everyone’s looking down. Look up and out of this world

Chris Levine presents Higher Power, a monumental new laser installation marking the opening of the Venice Biennale 2026.

For seven consecutive nights (4-11 May), audiences across Venice are invited to look skyward as a vast luminescent halo is projected into the night sky above San Clemente Island, transforming the skyscape into a shared field of light and perception.

 

Created using a modified military-grade laser system, Higher Power emits a high-intensity beam of green light, developed in collaboration with optical engineers and physicists in Germany. During development, test projections were detected from the International Space Station, approximately 250 miles above Earth, confirming the work’s extraordinary atmospheric reach.

Projected vertically into the sky, the laser alternates between a vertical beam leaving Earth’s atmosphere, and a geometrically precise halo. This symbol of unity and transcendence is generated through proprietary optics and atmospheric diffusion, with airborne particles acting as the medium through which the laser becomes visible. Suspended above Venice, the ring exists simultaneously as a physical phenomenon and a perceptual event.

Higher Power continues Levine’s long-standing exploration of light as both medium and message, working at the intersection of technology, perception and spirituality. The installation uses a single-frequency 515nm beam - a pure, coherent tone of light - designed to engage attention and induce a meditative state for the observer. Oscillating at 432hz, one of the sacred solfeggio healing frequencies, this is ancient wisdom meeting space age technology to create work that literally transmits good vibrations from the planet. With photons leaving the Earth's atmosphere travelling into space at 186,000 miles per second, this is art on a cosmic scale.

At its core, the work is conceived as a collective act of perception and unity. At a time when attention is increasingly directed downwards, Higher Power invites audiences to pause, step outside, and look up, experiencing the sky as a shared meditative space of connection across the city.

 

With full aviation clearance secured, the installation will be visible nightly until midnight throughout its run.

 

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May 4, 2026