Jacopo Mazzonelli studies and stages a concatenation of sensory stimuli, with recent works created especially for Dario Bonetta’s gallery, the A+B Gallery in Brescia. The “Soundproof” exhibition is accompanied by a critical text by Jessica Bianchera and it is divided in the two environments in such a way as to separate the perceptive modalities of the sound waves ideally coming from the exhibited works. The project originates from the analysis of the musical gesture, perceived as a founding principle aimed at the creation of a new and timeless language.
Jacopo Mazzonelli, Soundproof, exhibition view, A+B Gallery, Brescia, 2023. Ph. Petro Gilberti, courtesy the artist and A+B Gallery
The visitor is welcomed by works with a strong empathetic involvement, belonging to a new series entirely dedicated to the Platonic solids; the curtain velvet, distinctive element used to create an immersive and pictorial dialogue with the frieze characterizing the gallery, acts as a harmonious and connective principle capable of bringing together and bringing out the strong analogy between the refined geometric rigor and the captured sound immateriality and absorbed by the tissue itself. The four fundamental elements, fire, air, earth and water, respectively associated, according to Plato, with the tetrahedron, octahedron, cube and icosahedron, establish the entire cosmology of the world by investigating the structural aspect of sound and its primordial origin. With “Element Books”, title of the site-specific works, Mazzonelli retraces his entire artistic research based on the balance and equilibrium of expressive means with a distinct and profound narrative potential.
Jacopo Mazzonelli, Elements book, III, framed curtain velvets, 60,5 x 82,5 x 3,5 cm, 2023, courtesy the artist and A+B Gallery
What distinguishes Mazzonelli’s body of work emerges more in the second room, a place destined to welcome what could be defined as the beating heart of his practice: works capable of narrating, in a silent and immutable way, the harmonious principle of sound. Here, two concrete pieces, “Volume” and “Polium”, an amplifying material used with the aim of creating a metaphorical contrast with the previous works, catalyze the visitor’s attention by establishing, with the latter, a direct dialogue based on the interpretation and discovery of what remains of an oboe and a heraldic trumpet, musical instruments deprived of their functionality, whose sound becomes an inaudible embedded memory. The analysis of the behavior of the acoustic waves intensifies with the works installed on the wall whose musicality, paraphrased through a series of actions capable of giving them a new identity and utility, is expertly isolated and reproduced in the form of structural visual conformations. “Abracadabra”, an upright wooden piano, represents what could be defined as the basis of sound: an engraved pentagonal harmonic table whose letters, distributed on the surface through the punching technique and visually joined together following the Fibonacci harmonic sequence, give rise to the word that gives the title to the work.
Jacopo Mazzonelli, Abracadabra, 2023. Stamped harmonic table, iron, 95 x 100 x 5 cm. Ph. Petro Gilberti, courtesy the artist and A+B Gallery
The silent musical dimension that recurs in each of his works leads the visitor to elaborate a personal reflection starting from the observation of the musical gesture extrapolated from the original context, paraphrased and made immutable through the decompression of a stabilized sound, whose vibrations remain as an eternal and active principle.
Alessia Pietropinto
Info:
Jacopo Mazzonelli, Soundproof
11/02/2023 – 18/03/2023
A+B Gallery
corsetto Sant’Agata 22, 25121 Brescia
aplusbgallery.it
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