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GERANOS
Planomenon Dance - Movement II
Solo Show | Museo Elisarion | Locarno CH | 2024

Geranos is an imaginative research journey that began in 2021 from an artistic residency in Ascona organized by Swiss curator Noah Stolz. The project is part of a broad horizon of interdisciplinary investigation that has involved some iconographic archives at the Warburg Institute in London, two important institutions in the Locarno area, such as Monte Verità and the Eranos Foundation, and a residency conducted in Mexico City.

In 2022, two initial contributions of the research were presented: one at Monte Verità "GERANOS Choreography of a Mental Landscape - Movement I", coinciding with the Eranos conference cycle on Jung's Red Book, in which a mental diagram of the first investigations was shared with the public through a wall-collage; and a second at the Casa del Lago of the UNAM University through a reading developed at the end of the residency in Mexico City.

In March 2024, the exhibition "GERANOS Planomenon Dance - Movement II" was inaugurated: an exhibition path developed around the three floors of the Elisarion museum in the Swiss district of Locarno, as result of the last years of work.

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PUBLIC PROGRAM >>>

Exhibition View_Ph Mattia Angelini_2024

THE GEOMETRICAL MOTHER - Demon of Analogy | Mixed media on paper, 70 x 100cm, 2024

Exhibition View_Ph. Mattia Angelini_2024

EFFEMERIDI
Solo Show | Trieste Contemporanea | Trieste | 2022

EFFEMERIDI

Exhibition View_Ph. Caterina Shanta

The installation Effemeridi - what lasts a single day - stages in the space of Trieste Contemporanea a complex choreography of abstract forces consisting of traces, footprints and residues of interdependent phenomena on an astronomical, psychical and subnuclear scale.

A dance of combinatorial signs that relativises heterogeneous temporal extensions in order to disclose the evocative potential of what is transient.

Ph. Caterina Shanta

GERANOS
Choreography of a mental landscape - Movement I
Monte Verità | Ascona | 2022

GERANOS | Choreography of a mental landscape - Movement I

Geranos is the first stage of a new project started in a residency at Monte Verità in Ascona. Curated by Noah Stolz, the project will be articulated in various forms and events over the next two years, interacting with various cultural realities in the Locarno region. This first appointment is a seminal gesture: it proposes a visual intervention that will be set up and presented concurrently the conference organised at Monte by the Fondazione Eranos and dedicated to Carl Gustav Jung's famous "Red Book".

Geranos is the name of an ancient Greek dance inspired by the mating dance of cranes. It was Karoly Kerényi, a frequent visitor to Olga Fröbe and Eranos, who revealed that this dance is nothing other than the oldest cultural expression evoking the mythology of the labyrinth. This seminal image will open a shared reflection on the enormous potential of the ideas emanating from the Eranos meetings and the Monte Verità community. The wall-collage presented by the artist in the Balint room will constitute an initial restitution of a mental landscape in the midst of its crystallisation.

HYPHAE
Dove le cose cadono e non ritornano più a se stesse
Solo Show | Galleria Milano | 2021

HYPAE | Dove le cose cadono e non ritornano più a se stesse

After the long-term projects developed in China, Argentina and Russia, the artist embarked on a new research path between Iran, Armenia and Ethiopia in 2017. Travel experiences, studies and investigations in these countries crystallize in a metaphysical poem divided into 21 chapters called LuDD! - Topography of Light, published in 2019. The book constitutes the architecture of Hyphae, a compositional work designed for the spaces of Galleria Milano and developed as a guide for orienting oneself in the imaginaries of the writing.

The exhibition, curated by Katia Anguelova is conceived as an articulated installation that orchestrating collages, photographs, drawings, sculptures and archival material. The show is accompanied by a Public Program gathered as an integral part of the work. The program includes a panel of conferences by Giuliano Boccali, Professor of Indology, Sanskrit and Tibetology, Maurizio Barracano, art conservator of carpets and scholar of symbology and religions; a musical performance by Fakhraddin Gafarov and Lorenzo Pierobon; a workshop and a series of guided tours.

On the occasion of the exhibition, the second edition of LuDD! - Topography of Light, will be launched in a limited edition of 350 numbered and signed copies accompanied by images, published by Kunstverein Publishing, Milan & Boîte Editions, Lissone.

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Hyphae _Installation View_Ph. Roberto Marossi

Echo)))System
QW.11 | Collective Work | Standards | 2021

Echo)))System | QW.11 | Collective Work | Standards | 2021

QW.11 Echo))) System is conceived as a collective narrative work, with the sound participation of Radio Safari

Through the interweaving of the description of countless species, forms or races, the participants are called to take an active part to build a meta-narrative diagram. A collective score that describe an organic entity so complex and incongruous to be unrepresentable.

LuDD! - The Topography of Light
Novel | 1° Edition 2019 | 2° Edition 2021 - Kunstverein Publishing / Boite Edition

LuDD - "Topography of Light" Project D | Iran, Armenia, Ethiopia

"LuDD! - The Topography of Light”, 1° Edition, 150 copies, 220pages, 15 x 22cm, 2019

“LuDD! - The Topography of Light” is a metaphysical poem divided into 21 chapters inspired by a series of researches performed among Iran, Armenia, and Ethiopia.

Built through the interlace of biographies, scientific theories, mythologies and experiences, the story tells the creation and collapse of a Carpet warped with a sound-light yarn, originated by the sacrifice of a Primordial Taurus forced to gallop inside a particle accelerator in whose texture geometry, architecture and mirages of consciousness come to life. The carpet is a ritual cartography crossed by a solitary figure who, following a guiding river, embarks on a dissolutive journey between psyche and landscape in search of the voice that first sang the infinite creative act operating within the limits of space, time and metamorphosis of forms.

The writing constitutes the architecture of a wider project and the guide to orientate within the imaginary evocated by its formalizations: installations, lectures, conferences, and workshops are conceived as interdependent elements, whose composition intends to investigate the forces hidden in the concepts of origin, simulacrum, sacrifice, weaving and creative act involved in the vision and contemplation phenomena.

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“LuDD! - Topografia della Luce” è un poema metafisico di carattere narrativo suddiviso in 21 capitoli ispirato da una serie di ricerche condotte tra Iran, Armenia ed Etiopia.

Condensato attraverso l’articolazione di biografie, teorie scientifiche, mitologie ed esperienze, il libro narra la genesi e il collasso di un Tappeto di luce sonora, il cui filato è originato dal sacrificio di un Toro Primordiale costretto a un galoppo senza sosta dentro un acceleratore di particelle, e nelle cui trame si manifestano misura, geometria, tetragiardini, architetture e miraggi di coscienza. Una cartografia rituale attraversata da una figura solitaria, che al seguito di una guida fluviale, intraprende un viaggio dissolutivo tra psiche e paesaggio votato alla ricerca della voce che per prima ha cantato l’infinito atto creativo operante nei limiti dello spazio, del tempo e della metamorfosi delle forme.

Lo scritto costituisce l’architettura di un progetto più ampio e la guida per orientarsi negli immaginari evocati dalle sue formalizzazioni: reading, installazioni, conferenze e laboratori sono concepiti come elementi interdipendendi, il cui disegno integrale ha l’intento di esplorare le forze coinvolte nei fenomeni di visione e contemplazione attraverso i concetti di origine, simulacro, sacrificio, intessitura e atto creativo.

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"LuDD! - The Topography of Light”, 2° Edition, 350 copies, 288 pages, 17 x 24cm, 2021

THE COLLAPSE OF TRANSPARENCY
Hypogaeum Water-Cisterns Of Viceconte Palace, Matera Capital of Culture

THE COLLAPSE OF TRANSPARENCY | Matera Capital of Culture 2019, Italy

The Collapse of Transparency is a site-specific sound installation composed for one of the seven hypogeal cisterns of Palazzo Viceconte in Matera. The sound architecture created within the underground space explores the concept of limit, intended as contact with what is inaccessible, an ultimate boundary that unites, relates and at the same time isolates and separates.

The work idea is developed from a narrative passage of "LuDD! - The Topography of Light”, a metaphysical poem divided into 21 chapters written by the artist in 2019 and inspired by a series of researches performed among Iran, Armenia, and Ethiopia, whose contents intends to investigate the forces hidden in the phenomena of vision through the concepts of origin, simulacrum, sacrifice, weaving and creational act.

The installation is constructed through the reading of a fragment of LuDD, which represents a key point of the narrative experience, the point where the protagonist, after being nullified by the contact with the void, is conducted in a psychic path of disintegration with his environment, leading him to cross the terminal limit that precedes oblivion. Within this sound landscape the voice evokes a sequence of mental images oscillating between consciousness and unconsciousness, decline and fall, perceivable and incomprehensible, spoken images that, during the track evolution, are gradually converted by the sound designer and composer Matteo Mariano into an abstract acoustic environment, which saturates the hypogeal architecture to merge with it contributing to the creation of a dense and organic listening space.

ĀSHKHĀRHĀTZŪYTZ
Merkurov Museum, Giumry, Armenia

ĀSHKHĀRHĀTZŪYTZ | Visual Chrestomathy of the Mount Analogue Inland Peak Expedition

The installation is inspired by The Mount Analogue, a symbolic novel of mountaineering geographic adventures by René Daumal, left unfinished due to the premature death of the author. Ashkharhatzuytz - Visual Chrestomathy of the Mount Analogue Inland Peak Expedition imagines, through a visual compendium inspired by passages of Daumal’s novel and its missing part, the mystical topography of the summit of the Mount Analogue, which for the same analogical reason must necessarily be quarried. Introducing inside the external specular landscape, the climb is celebrated in the descent to the abyss where the upper skies are disbanded.

Exhibition View - STANDART 2017 - Triennial of Contemporary art in Armenia, S. D. Merkurov’s Museum, Gyumri, 2017

ORIENT 1 - Everlasting Sea
PREMIO MAXXI

ORIENT 1 - Everlasting Sea | MAXXI, Rome

Starting from the suggestions developed by Russian Cosmism, Orient 1 contemplates the exploration of a “Terra incognita”, that, by mirroring the cartography of the Moon and the Earth, evokes an atlas without geography, in which distances and landscapes are nullify: a reproduction of the monument dedicated to Russian cosmonauts rises from a coal crater; a wall painting refers to Kazimir Malevič’s Suprematist Square; pictures of sailing boats drifting into obscure lunar oceans; Boris Godunov’s musical notes by Modest Musorgskij (used as a secret code for Russian aerospace launches) brings the viewer in an unfathomable time. The multiple elements of the installation shape the millennial human tension towards the unknown, reflecting on the inscrutability of the forces that move his wanderings in a metaphysical space.

Exhibition View - Premio MAXXI, Rome, 2016

Photography by Luis Do Rosario

Exhibition View - Premio MAXXI, Rome, 2016, Photography by Luis Do Rosario

THE PLOUGH AND OTHER STARS
IMMA, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin

THE PLOUGH AND OTHER STARS | IMMA, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin

This exhibition proposes some alternatives to death – space travel, time travel, reincarnation. Works by Riccardo Arena, Richard John Jones, Lara Khaldi and Yazan Khalili are brought together in the immortal domain of the museum, to explore strategies towards life extension, by artistic if not other means. The exhibition functions as both a show, for people to come and visit, and a rehearsal space for the development of a new theatrical production, in collaboration with Cow House Studios and The Centre For Dying On Stage.

Kete Strain

Exhibition View - IMMA, Dublin, Exhibition View, 2016

VAVILON
Project C - Solovki Islands 2013/2016

VAVILON - Project C | - Solovki Islands 2013/2016

VAVILON project develops from the studies and suggestions that arise from the research conducted on the Solovki Islands, an archipelago located in the Russian White Sea, at 160 km from the Northern Pole. Through history the archipelago became a place of worship for the ancient nomadic populations, a realm for ascesis and mysticism, an orthodox sanctuary, and more recently the site of the first Soviet forced labour camps, Gulag. The Islands are at the same time witness of the utopias and the dystopias, battlefield of ideologic wars and a place for redemption. The inputs for the artistic investigation were a travel experience on the Islands in 2013 and the study of the less renowned aspects of the russian culture. In particular the Russian Cosmism, that represents a common ground of the totalitaristic system and that characterized all the history of the Soviet spaceship program, aimed to pursue the immortality through the cosmic escape from the labyrinth of mortality.

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