Venaria Reale lights up with Marinella Senatore's light sculptures

Thanks to the support of PAC 2021 - Plan for Contemporary Art promoted by the General Directorate for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture, with which the Consortium of Royal Residences of Savoy was able to acquire it, the light sculpture titled Assembly by Marinella Senatore (Cava de’ Tirreni, 1977) arrives at Venaria Reale. Originally produced for the Steirischer Herbst’21 festival in Graz, the work became iconic in London in 2022 with the widespread exhibition Afterglow promoted by Mazzoleni Gallery, during which the monumental light sculpture was displayed and experienced by the community during the opening parade at Battersea Power Station. It was then exhibited by the Alliance des Corps festival in Paris, when the Palais de Tokyo, in celebration of its 20th anniversary, gave Marinella Senatore carte blanche through a diffuse exhibition, workshops, collective performances, and artist-led meetings in the institution’s spaces.

Now from Nov. 4, 2022 to Jan. 8, 2023, the work will be exhibited, with the collaboration of the City of Venaria Reale, as part of the Marinella Senatore exhibition in Venaria’s Piazza dell’Annunziata, and later it will be placed in the Juvarrian Citroniera of the Reggia.

Assembly is inspired by the traditional illuminated architectural structures that, starting in the 15th century, were used in outdoor public celebrations in southern Italy and that Marinella Senatore renders “relational spaces” through the inclusion of quotes related to empowerment and emancipation. It is an evocation of the Baroque festivals that thanks to ephemeral apparatuses changed the appearance of the Royal Residences and the cities home to the courts: today a celebration of the transformative power of art and sharing, in the wake also of the themes of the concomitant 29th edition of Artissima Transformative experience in Turin and the initiatives of Christmas at Venaria Reale 2022 - Immaginaria.

During the same period and until Feb. 5, 2023, on the initiative of Guido Curto, director of the Consortium and scientific referent of the project, thanks to the collaboration with Mazzoleni Gallery, six light sculptures by the artist will be exhibited in the rooms of the Reggia at the Anticamera dei Valletti a piedi. The theme of light is fundamental in his production: since his studies in film disciplines at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome, it has been one of his privileged languages. Light, electric and optical, material and metaphorical, becomes a medium of narrative and poetic creation, as well as of resistance and cohesion. “Light sculptures are generators of energy that, in the form of light beams, propagates through space, changing it and modifying its structures as well as the individuals in it,” the artist explains. The works hark back to the forms of Baroque architecture, but at the same time invite contemplation and action with quotations on the sense of identity of the individual and the collective, such as the best-known Dance First Think Later, taken from Samuel Beckett, or We Rise by Lifting Others, traced with neon mercury-free, echoing the artist’s drawing and calligraphy.

All of Marinella Senatore’s works featured at Venaria are designed to ensure low and sustainable energy consumption. They have also been made using LED light and mercury-free neon, an innovative technology that makes it possible to produce lamps free of mercury, a highly polluting metal already banned in several European countries, ensuring their durability.

For more info: lavenaria.it

Image: Marinella Senatore, Sculptures of light at Venaria Reale. Photo by Renato Ghiazza

Venaria Reale lights up with Marinella Senatore's light sculptures

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