Charles Matson Lume’s “lacuna (for Gustaf Sobin),” 2025, uses common materials such as plastic sheeting, hologram tape, and light, while the word lacuna is uncommon and means gap or empty space, derived from the Latin words lake or lagoon. The themes found in his site-specific installation are based on light, poetry, beauty, and mortality.

Matson Lume is a visual artist whose art is engaged in the pas de deux of light and matter. He’s exhibited his work at numerous institutions, including the Irish Museum of Modern Art (Dublin, Ireland), Babel Kunst (Trondheim, Norway), Kemijärvi Art Gallery (Kemijärvi, Finland), and Hunter College, (New York City). Matson Lume has received fellowships from the Bush Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. He’s participated in artist residencies in Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Ireland, and the United States. Matson Lume holds an MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and lives in Saint Paul.

Gustaf Sobin (1935–2005) was a poet and novelist who was born in Boston and earned a BA from Brown University. In 1962, he moved to Paris, met mentor René Char, and settled in Provence. Sobin’s poetry explored existence and transcendence through negation, omission, and lacuna—voids or gaps in meaning. His notable collections include Wind Chrysalid’s Rattle (1980), Towards the Blanched Alphabets (1998), and Collected Poems (2010). He also translated works by Henri Michaux and René Char. Sobin lived in France for over 40 years.

Learn more about his work and read a 2013 review of his Collected Poems in Rain Taxi.

The exhibition is part of the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program, celebrating 50 years in 2025.

Support provided by RBC Wealth Management.