Laura Lima at Fondazione Prada in Milan closes out Slight Agitation project

The Fondazione Prada ’s Slight Agitation project, which has seen four artists take turns in the spaces of the Cistern with site-specific installations, is reaching its final beat: the conclusion is entrusted to an exhibition entitled Slight Agitation 4/4: Laura Lima and which, in the spaces of the Cistern, from June 15 to October 22, 2018, showcases the installation of Brazilian artist Laura Lima(Brazil, 1971), who was selected together with Tobias Putrih(Slovenia, 1972), Pamela Rosenkranz(Switzerland, 1979) and the Austrian collective Gelitin by the Thought Council of Fondazione Prada.

With the project Horse Takes King (“Horse Eats King”), Laura Lima presents an eccentric experiment in which she seeks to alter the senses that determine our perception, installing in the spaces of the Cistern three large sculptures that constitute as many expressions of a seemingly absurd taxonomic system.

The title of the intervention is a clear reference to the game of chess, capable of creating an illusory space in which viewers can move freely while being unaware of a larger context that would explain the artist’s intent. The works in the exhibition, Bird (2016), Pendulum (2018) and Telescope (2018), invite the viewer to process what in astronomical terms is called a “syzygy,” a straight-line configuration of three celestial bodies in a gravitational system.

Installed in the central room of the Cistern is Pendulum (2018), a mechanism that mimics the movement of Foucault’s pendulum and to the end of which a painting is attached. The audience is invited to speculate on the origin of the canvas.

In the space to the left is Telescope (2018), a vertical installation housing an astronomy class. On the first level, two half-hour astronomy seminars will be held every day at 12:30 p.m. and 5 p.m., designed by scientists from L’Officina del Planetario, an association that is in charge of programming at Milan’s Civic Planetarium. On the upper level, a telescope facing the sky is installed at a height of about 10 meters, usable by the public under the guidance of an astronomer.

The right-hand room of the Cistern houses Bird (2016), created in collaboration with Brazilian artist Zé Carlos Garcia. The sculpture represents a huge animal that seems to have fallen from the sky and plunged into the exhibition space by pure chance.

The combination of these three works in the exhibition spaces questions the nature of visitors’ involvement in a space and place by stimulating their perception: the artist explores the boundaries between the imaginary and the real to emphasize the poetic and absurd component inherent in what is real only in appearance.

For all information you can call +39 02 5666 2611 or send an email to INFO@FONDAZIONEPRADA.ORG. The Prada Foundation website is www.fondazioneprada.org

Image: Laura Lima, Bird, 2016. “Slight Agitation 4/4: Laura Lima.” Photo Mattia Balsamini. Courtesy Fondazione Prada

Laura Lima at Fondazione Prada in Milan closes out Slight Agitation project

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