At MAN in Nuoro, an exhibition on illusion, from Magritte to augmented reality

From July 8 to October 30, 2022, MAN Nuoro presents the exhibition SENSORAMA. The Gaze, Things, Deceptions. From Magritte to Augmented Reality, curated by Chiara Gatti and Tiziana Cipelletti, with the scientific contribution of Baingio Pinna of the Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of Sassari.

The title SENSORAMA is inspired by the name of a machine devised in 1957 by U.S. filmmaker Morton Heilig to test synaesthetic experiences in his experience cinema, in order to amplify not only sound impressions with stereophonic audio, but also tactile, dynamic and olfactory ones. To see music is the name of a section reserved for discovering precisely synaesthesia, the psychic automatism of associating in a single image two contents referring to two different sensory spheres.

The exhibition intends to adopt the Museum of Illusions model in an original way and entrusts the works of contemporary artists and videomakers to explore the relationship between vision and perception with the aim of presenting the complexity of cognitive phenomena and the pleasure of being deceived. The result ofillusion is a representation of things that is not real: it is up to our brains to navigate between appearances and puzzles. Those who deal with perception start from these premises, but they know that they have centuries of philosophical discussion behind them, from Plato onward. Today, neuroscience helps us formulate some answers by studying the sense organs and analyzing the brain’s ability to interpret the signals they send it.

The review at the MAN in Nuoro wants to start from historical antecedents, from the noble fathers of a painting of truth and deception, such as René Magritte and Giorgio de Chirico, to open up to more recent aesthetic investigations regarding perception and authenticity. Here then are Florence Henri’s mirror photographs or Alberto Biasi’s optic-kinetic plates, Peter Kogler or Marina Apollonio’s enveloping and perturbing environments; and again, Marc Didou’s anamorphic sculptures or performances intended as true human trompe-l’œil by Liu Bolin, the invisible man.

SENSORAMA is so much cinema, art of artifice par excellence, “factory of illusions” since its inception and ground of visual experimentation of the avant-garde. The exhibition’s itinerary presents the fantastic cinematography of George Méliès based on the disappearance of objects achieved with a primitive stop frame and the levitation of things and people with the one-step shot, leading to the phantasmagorical interactions between artistic avant-gardes (Léger, Man Ray, Picabia, Cocteau, Duchamp) and cinema.

With the augmented reality installation, “nonreality” comes out of its boundaries, floods our perception and gives an access to new meanings in a multilayer vision/version. Without the use of tools, but through the use of one’s cell phone, one can experience the fascination of multilayered content, an indispensable completion of the vision of a world in transition. The project is enriched with site-specific installations, designed specifically for MAN by artists such as Felice Varini, author of drawings in space, as monumental as they are ephemeral, as well as a magical room designed by designer Denis Santachiara and a cave of books carved out like rocks from impalpable body imprints made by Marco Cordero.

Thus,SENSORAMA intends to represent the degree zero of perception, useful to clean up our gaze, to return to wonder at the paradoxes of sight, to begin again to observe the works with an inquiring gaze, to approach the images aware of a fluid limit between real and virtual, but ready to sharpen our eyesight to recognize the mechanisms that orchestrate the very process of vision. An invitation to learn to look. But, above all, to doubt.

On display are artists such as René Magritte, Giorgio de Chirico, Florence Henri, Alberto Biasi, Luigi Mazzarelli, Peter Kogler, Felice Varini, Marina Apollonio, Denis Santachiara, Marc Didou, Peter Miller, Liu Bolin, Marco Cordero, Humans since 1982, Ole Martin Lund Bø, Paolo Cavinato, Cinzia Fiorese, Marco Di Giovanni, Giuliano Sale, Greta Frau, Kensuke Koike.

Exhibition design by Denis Santachiara

Coordination by Rita Moro and Elisabetta Masala

Video installations curated by Storyville

For info: http://www.museoman.it/

At MAN in Nuoro, an exhibition on illusion, from Magritte to augmented reality

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