Villa Nigra. A place suspended in time and space, in between two lakes, the memory of the past centuries and the start for new projects.

The exhibition Continuum. The spirit of a place, curated by Asilo Bianco and Lo Spirito del Lago, proposes a dialogue between contemporary and history, focusing the attention on the continuity of these two dimensions. Nine artists, four Italians and five Germans, integrate their artworks with the park, the architecture and the frescos of the Villa, giving an interesting interpretation of the place.

Enrica Borghi presents the equisetum and the jellyfishes. The first installation is in the garden, the artificiality of the blue plastic bottles is in perfect armony with the natural elements. It is a thin and light play that creates visions. The same lightness we can find watching at the terrace. The Jellyfishes float in the air, like small points of blue, white and orange, and they fly toward a timeless poetry.
Angel Molinari lays his work on the trees. A long pictorial strip, with an informal sign, is weaved among the trunks, conversing with a second intervention that vertically goes down on one of the facade of the Villa. It is an action painting, able to sustain with great composure the challenge of a complex space.

The courtyard also contains the installation of Maik + Dirk Löbbert. A great circle composed by chairs invites the spectator to sit and to silently contemplate the surrounding space. The investigation on the relationship between environment and artwork is the essential topic of the research of the German brothers. We can notice it observing the photographic documentation of their interventions, performed in different public contexts, in Italian cities and villages as Turin, Omegna, Pettenasco and Miasino. In the same room it is present the work of Gereon Krebber. The artist creates small hens using gloves in latex and the motors of Chinese toys. The little mechanical animals stay on the floor, that becomes their habitat.

Frauke Wilken‘s investigation is more intimate. From the ceiling of the room a shapeless installation goes down, recalling the form of a vulva, symbol of eroticism and desire, but also of maternity and birth. Primitive generative potentiality.

An existential and internal component is also present in Birgit Kahle‘s work. Inside an old fireplace the video of a crackling fire communicates the feeling of a family place. On the opposed wall a great red curtain, torn in some points, is the background of a print that represents some flowers illuminated by a weak light, tomatoes and a hand that tries to touch them. There is tension, eroticism, pain and passion.

Fausta Squatriti‘s research combines three languages: photography, sculpture and painting. All is framed by old wood tables. It is a poetics of the fragment, that starts from a found object. After there is the elaboration of a landscape-state of mind, before through the photographic action and, finally, with the creation of a more abstract pictorial composition, where the representative dimension leaves space to the imagination. The visual art becomes so the narration of the lost life.

Antonella Aprile starts from unorganized and unstable elements. The drawing becomes the tool chosen by the artist to find continuity and unexpected formal developments. The irregularity constantly converses with the geometric precision. The blue lines become prosecutions of the installations, running along the floor and the walls of the room. The whole environment is recreated, it is the recognition of the constructive archetype that composes the space.

At the end Harald Fuchs, a visual surprise. An installation video, rich and complex, it turns one of the rooms into a space cabin for an interstellar trip. Maps of the universe, coordinates of galaxies, milky ways and orion’s belts are woven with projections, on the walls and on the maps themselves. The space is turned into a laboratory, we feel the desire to look for and to create new paths, we want to explore the unknown mistery. A total immersion in constellations and orbits. We are between the reality and the virtuality, in an indefinite dimension, where the spirits and the souls of the places are.

Andrea Grotteschi

Info:

Continuum. Lo spirito di un luogo
2018, July 6 – 29
Villa Nigra, Piazza Beltrami, 5, 28010 Miasino (NO)
Thursday-Sunday 14 – 18
curated by Asilo Bianco e Lo Spirito del Lago