Press Release Transitions of Energy / Kotka 2017
KOTKA news
Transitions of Energy en ESPOARTE
Descripción de la Exposición
Transitions of Energy Flavia Bigi, casaluce/Geiger & synusi@cyborg, Juliana Herrero, Sissa Micheli, Francesca Romana Pinzari /// Five international artists who live in Austria, France, Italy, and Slovakia, and who travel between these countries, have created works that focus on different sources of energy and its transitions. The curator of the exhibition is the Italian art historian Lorella Scacco. The exhibition Transitions of Energy investigates how energy interacts with the stream of life in different fields. Modern society relies almost totally on energy: mechanic, electric, chemical, and thermal forms of energy are largely exploited in all industrial organization and production processes. Still, there are other forms of energy such as spiritual, passionate, and social ones, which have been the driving forces for mankind since time immemorial. These forms of energy have inspired much artmaking: the works of the five artists showcased in this exhibition, for instance, span different forms of energy, which are engaged in interplay with the stream of life.
Flavia Bigi focuses on the research of inner spirituality. Her installation entitled “Pay Attention II” is composed of seven cubic forms, which allude to the unavoidable dogmatism of many religions –all secluded within their pretension of unchangeable perfection. The absolute black surface is stigmatized and infringed by a single symbol, and the interplay of truth and illusion steps in. At the center of this circular installation appears the glass icon of human face, on which the artist engraved the mathematical formula of energy: E=mc2. As a reminiscence of the Renaissance, she puts humanity to the core of our ritual choices. Her research also pushes into the realm of fairy tales, which aim at guiding children’s behaviour, as showed in the photographic series “Ada” and in the drawings from the cycle “Intimate Relationship”.
The philosophical approach of casaluce/geiger&synusi@cyborg analyses posthuman territory and cyborg stream of life between real and virtual dimension. The artist approaches the topic of energy by using its virtual dimension. Her multi‐identity pervades the different platforms of the Internet in the form of a virus, which is often visually transformed into cryptography on photographs. In this context, a photo installation of the series “REHAB” (work in progress) will be presented. Here, energy has to be understood as that psychophysical process that requires re‐activation of energy levels during a borderline experience where the subject is neither ill nor healthy. The work is a search for dialogue between what is related to the intimate and personal experience, but also a metaphor of reality stretched toward the social world, between the dimension linked to natural world, to water, air, muds, solar light as well as light impulses and electromagnetic waves. A crossover, in this case too, of the post‐human dimension with all its open questions and reflections that affect us all. One video entitled “The heart” will be showed too.
Juliana Herrero tackles the subject of energy by dealing with sound recordings and digital found footage materials of multimedia descent, which are fragmented and musically re-layered. As energy transforms, her work brings alienated worlds into surreal immersive scapes within an emancipatory approach. Her sound floating landscapes, such as “Milieu”, concern themselves with questions about the concepts of infinity and the construction of contingent realities. As a counterpoint, and driving reflection on the relationship between human being and technology in times of hyper-connectivity, the artist will exhibit some water colours and mixed media works from the series “Blues en Sol Menor” and “Multipolaren”. These recent works mix pigments and ethereal sound in poetic way, examining further matters of perception: a quasi synesthetic view.
Sissa Micheli’s video installation “A Mountain Phenomenon” focuses on the energy variations of light. Pictures of some silvery mountains move across space as they are projected on reflectors used in photography and filmmaking to redirect light towards a given object. As they turn, these mountains, made of rescue blankets, reflect and break light, enhancing its energetic potential. Artifcially animated structures seem to challenge the physical rules of transformation of solar energy. The use of rescue blankets adds to the feeling of being in a state of emergency and invites us to reflect upon our times, as well as showed by the drawings of her cycle “Icicle caves in mountain landscapes”. Her works expose the global issue of the depletion of natural energy resources, while, on the other hand, constantly focusing on their temporal dimension.
Francesca Romana Pinzari works with physical interaction between people. In her video The First Time We Kissed, the artist tries to capture something as untouchable and indefinable as an emotion, and to stop a unique and unrepeatable moment to make it eternal. Ironically Francesca Romana Pinzari seizes this romantic and poetic emotion with technical and medical instruments. To create the video she used a thermic camera, two ECG machines and two microphones to record the sound of heartbeats. The project was executed thanks to the collaboration of two Italian universities, who supplied the artist with the necessary technical instruments. Her video installation Get closer invite viewers to lie on a bed beside the projected picture of the artist, who is filmed in her sleep. Transitions of Energy will be hosted at the Kymenlaakso Museum in Kotka from 7 April to 25 June 2017. The exhibition tour started at Kunsthalle Bratislava (Slovakia) in 2015 and then in Finland at Kajaani Art Museum in 2016 and will continue in2017 to K. H. Renlund Museum, Kokkola, Finland. The exhibition is under the patronage of the Italian Institute of Culture in Helsinki, the Austrian Embassy and the Argentine Embassy in Helsinki.
Exposición. 07 abr de 2017 - 25 jun de 2017 / Kymenlaaksso Museum - Maritime Centre Vellamo / Kotka, Southern Finland, Finlandia
Exposición. 07 abr de 2017 - 25 jun de 2017 / Kymenlaaksso Museum - Maritime Centre Vellamo / Kotka, Southern Finland, Finlandia
Formación. 01 oct de 2024 - 04 abr de 2025 / PHotoEspaña / Madrid, España
