In Pescara, Anna Franceschini and Nanda Vigo's Intergalactic Walks in the sign of light

From March 27 to September 15, 2023 Vistamare in Pescara presents Passeggiate Intergalattiche (Intergalactic Walks), an exhibition by Anna Franceschini (Pavia, 1979) and Nanda Vigo (Milan, 1936 - 2020), in collaboration with theNanda Vigo Archive.

From an idea of Anna Franceschini, who with this exhibition project declares an affinity of spirit, inner motion and mechanism of thought with Nanda Vigo, the exhibition represents a dialogue between two artists who have given voice, at different times and in different contexts, to a common research on the themes of movement and observation, reflection and light, through works as heterogeneous in their materials as they are eclectic in the intuition that generated them.

Intergalactic Walks is proposed as aspace-time exploration, a dimensional, intimate, spiritual and adventurously sci-fi journey in the sign of light. Explicit, reflected, obscure, emanated or restrained, it is a light that does not necessarily make one see but that, certainly, makes one see.

For Nanda Vigo, space offers itself through the luminous multiplication of surfaces. For Anna Franceschini, time manifests itself in infinite rotations, in eternal oscillations. The clarity of intentions and the brilliance of thought give way to mystery, to the shaping of an esoteric elsewhere where anything can happen, even within the universal laws of physics. If the trigger of Franceschini’s artistic production is cinema, Nanda Vigo triggers a swarming of space, an interference in the architectural frame that results in a continuous movement of the image. The mirrors, the Cosmos (1981) like the Andromeda (1974), are doors to infinite space, breaking through architecture to penetrate matter. Franceschini’s machines invite us to cross the threshold of the known to lose ourselves in infinite reflections and parallel universes turgid with possibility.

The exhibition itinerary unfolds through the gallery’s six rooms, designed by Anna Franceschini as inhabited environments: interiors that overlook other interiors to project into infinity. As in the finale of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, the universe, through the intelligence of humanity, is transformed into places dear to personal and collective memory.

In the main hall, illuminated by the luminous disks of Nanda Vigo’s Light Tree (1983-84), Anna Franceschini’s majestic kinetic sculpture The Mechanics of the Elements (2022) rotates on itself. The work shows nonstop and from every possible angle the three elements that make it up, lying on a steel platform and featuring the colors of the sky at the moment the sun is about to rise or set. They could also change arrangement, at the behest of the artist who does not impose a unique and predetermined display, but they would still be laid down with the grace that spreads from movement understood as a fundamental trait of existence.

The rotation is captured in the video Do you know why they respect me? Because they think I’m dead (2019) by Anna Franceschini, in which objects seemingly unknown or dismissed from their current meaning vibrate with a cosmic magnetism, arranged in ritual compositions. Those who enter are invited to stand behind the frosted glass of two legendary Chronotopes by Nanda Vigo and perceive the moving images through the distortion created by the sculpture-lenses. The Chronotope in turn becomes a cinematic device, a medium not only metaphorical but physical, media diaphana through which one can access another dimension of seeing.

The calm universal rotation of the hall is a prelude to an even deeper recollection. A room of enveloping darkness like velvet reveals interstellar blue lights and feminine gestures dispersed in the abstraction of the cosmos.

Other rooms are inhabited by soft presences, subject-objects of fur and synthetic wigs that question the everyday hierarchies between animate and inanimate beings and take light and discreet possession of rooms that embody the quintessence of a living room, a small study, a dining room. The desco, the meal as a convivial moment par excellence, is also transfigured into a formal repertoire, through a set of sculptural tableware Pompeii (1992), made by Nanda Vigo together with her friend Hannibal Oste, the end of which is inhabited by statuesque miniatures that, fond of the gesture of hungry hands, are yearning toward a short film by Franceschini, where a micro torch-bearer, a décor detail of a music box, is amused in its becoming an image doubled and blurred, once again, by a mirror and, once again, in rotation.

For info: https://vistamare.com/

Hours: Monday from 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.; Tuesday through Friday from 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and 3:30 to 7:30 p.m.

Image: Nanda Vigo, Mirror Cosmos CB2 (1981; mirror glass and black paint, 100 x 90 cm) Courtesy of Archivio Nanda Vigo, Milan - Glas Italia, Macherio

In Pescara, Anna Franceschini and Nanda Vigo's Intergalactic Walks in the sign of light

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.