Environmental dimensions. Light, water, photography, sound.
A) Outside: A semi-submerged photographic image of 60x20m. occupies the stretch of water of one of two ancient covered basins of the Arsenale. The image represents simultaneously two circles of water and the symbol of Infinity. A stone thrown in water has created the splitting of the first cell, giving rise to a multiplicative process. The photographic act freezes the action and renders eternal the instant and the becoming of time, Past and present, stasis and change, finite and infinite are simultaneously present: the place is real and virtual at the same time.
B) Inside: 12 light-boxes placed in the niches of the left wall of the Theater of the Virgin transform the wall in a great self-illuminating façade. Light and architecture are welded into a single radiating structure that transmits light within the building. On the floor in front, a water tank of about 16×16 m. reflects the architecture of light, generating the virtual image space. The still surface of the water is perturbed by the undulatory motion of concentric waves that propagate rhythmically from the center of the tank. The vibration of this liquid surface corresponds with the intangible sounds diffused into the great emptiness of the room: visual and sound waves interact, creating the vibrating movement of the water.
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http://hdl.handle.net/1889/1996
]]>The title refers to the Atlas Palace, a myth that appears in the Boiardo and Ariosto Orlando, and that here acquires a personal value for Tosatti as a place to deal with, but also in a relationship with the visitors, though the symbols of the labyrinth and the mirror, a central theme in the artist's research between 2011 and 2012. Through a practice divided between art and architecture, often described by Tosatti himself with an analogy with the room in the middle of the "zone" in the Andrei Tarkovsky film Stalker, a model of superimposition of identity and desire, here the artist tries to make the apparition of “castles and monuments” true, introducing in the project the themes of electricity and illusion:
“The culmination of the work will consist precisely in a large switch that visitors could turn off, letting darkness and silence fall over the entire building. It will therefore be necessary - also from the visual point of view – to rely on certain image of technology, related to electricity. Obviously the kind of technology that should be used is not be the most modern one, but the one that is present in a shared imaginary, consequently machines and tools form several decades ago, which aren’t used anymore”.
Studying the construction diary and the preparatory drawings we can also highlight the particular attention dedicated to the façade, upon which two “mirror flags” should have been installed to make "the invisible building" recognizable, and the structuring of a path through the different floors. A room should have contained, upon one of the tables that are already present inside the building, a glass of water and a bottle of Novalgina, a painkiller, together with an hidden mechanism that would have created a light and steady vibration to shake the water surface when placed upon the table. Another room was designed to provide the optical illusion of a rhino freely moving inside the space, so to anticipate the top floor switch, where the machinery would have been placed. Classical statues - originals or copies - should also have been present alongside the path, as an archetype of man and as a mirror for the visitor, while at the ground floor, currently occupied by an archaeological excavation, an artist intervention would have been necessary to turn it into a sculptural space.
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The themes of fragility, uncertainty, sadness, the interest in the act of travelling and in the condition of the traveller, the focus on female protagonists, these are just a few hints we can grasp from the brief description of the artist showed here, that can also easily be found inside Annika Ström film production.
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