Heaven in a room for 6 hours straight: it's the Trussardi Foundation's new project

Entitled The Sky in a room, the new project of the Nicola Trussardi Foundation in Milan, by Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson (Reykjavík, 1976), curated by Massimiliano Gioni, is being developed. From Sept. 22 to Oct. 25, 2020, every day, professional singers will take turns, one at a time, at the organ of the Church of San Carlo al Lazzaretto, also known as San Carlino, to perform an ethereal arrangement of Gino Paoli’s famous song, Il cielo in una stanza, which will be repeated continuously for six hours a day.

The project, they let the Foundation know, was conceived following the difficult period of quarantine that has marked the public and private lives of millions of Italians, particularly the citizens of Lombardy.The intervention was strongly desired by President Beatrice Trussardi and artistic director Massimiliano Gioni in the 18th year of the Nicola Trussardi Foundation’s nomadic activity, to enter into dialogue with the past and recent history of the city of Milan.

"The sky in a room,“ the artist explains, ”is the only song I know that reveals one of the fundamental characteristics of art: its ability to transform space. In a way, it is a conceptual work. But it is also a celebration of the power of imagination, inflamed by love, to transform the world around us. It is a poem about how love and music can expand even the smallest space, until it embraces the sky and the trees... Love can read what is written on the farthest star, said Oscar Wilde."

Ragnar Kjartansson’s works, which alternate between video, performance, music and painting, are characterized by a sense of deep melancholy and are often inspired by the tradition of twentieth-century Nordic theater and literature, with references that can be traced to the work of Tove Janson, Halldór Laxness, Edvard Munch and August Strindberg, among others. Raised within an educated artistic and musical background (his parents are successful theater actors, his godmother is a professional folk singer) while still a teenager Kjartansson embarked on a career as a musician with several groups, including Kanada, Kósý, and Trabant, with whom he tours both in Iceland and internationally. Since 2007 he has devoted himself entirely to the visual arts, but his relationships with music and theater (as expressive tools and sentimental universes) remain central to many of his works. In particular, the repetition of sounds and gestures is a key element in his compositions and choreographies, which have often been described as forms of meditation and reflection in which refrains, phrases and musical tunes are transformed into poignant litanies and hypnotic mantras.

The Sky in a Room, a performance initially commissioned by Artes Mundi and the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff, with support from the Derek Williams Trust and the ArtFund, for this presentation will be staged in the Church of San Carlo al Lazzaretto, a place whose history is intimately linked to previous epidemics, from the plague of 1576 to that of 1630, made famous by Alessandro Manzoni’s I promessi sposi (The Betrothed), which mentions the Lazzaretto on several occasions in the novel and sets one of its best-known chapters there.

For the project, the Trussardi Foundation is also announcing auditions for singers and musicians. The basic requirement is that they must be able to sing and play the organ at the same time: candidates must therefore be experienced and trained in singing as well as organ and piano. More information about auditions can be emailed to Barbara Roncari (br@fondazionenicolatrussardi.com).

Heaven in a room for 6 hours straight: it's the Trussardi Foundation's new project

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