E ci fa dispetto il tempo

Extinct tigers, Roman villas trapped in layered eras and mythological beings that recur in the contemporary are some of the elements that compose an inventory of hidden memories which the German writer Judith Schalansky collects and revives in her stories. For her, the world becomes an immense archive of itself, self-celebrating in the desperate attempt to learn through what is left. An archive that, if discovered by some future being, could be indecipherable, but it is an inevitable part of human nature the; need to leave a trace of their passage and act on those of the past. Some artists privilege as research material those elements that testify to their relationship with the concept of disappearance, in its various forms. As Marc Augé argues in Rovine e Macerie, "art like ruins is an invitation to feel time”. The exhibition "E ci fa dispetto il tempo" is structured on works as notes, a still image of a creative process that works on time. The title is inspired by a verse of the poem Solitude by Mihai Eminescu and replacing the pronoun from singular to plural opens to a collective gaze. Perla Sardella (1991), Nicola Ghirardelli (1994) and Lorenzo Montinaro (1997) build a dimension in which stories and elements no longer present are collected, as if to make an inventory. The itinerary reflects agreements and clashes between intimate visions and those aimed at the other, with different techniques and inspirations that adapt to a space that already carries a story. Nicola Ghirardelli build the series Se non bruciamo come si illuminerà la notte suspended in space. New forms arise from a hybridization of natural and archaic elements, which develop in the expanding space. His work looks at references from the past, forgotten mythologies that sometimes remain unconsciously in the collective visual perception. The sculptural structures combine lost techniques, such as the Etruscan one of the creation of the bucchero, and materials with evocative morphologies. A reference to the grotesque Romanesque, often reinterpreted in the history of Western architecture since the Renaissance, is an inspiration for these new compositions that have a mythological flavor: casts of natural forms combined with anthropomorphic depictions. These new conglomerates of myths are reflected in the work Lapidi by Lorenzo Montinaro. This series composes a path in which emerges his relationship with life and death through visual aphorisms. The cut of the opaline mirror elements, describes a sort of family tree that looks at the missing people its ancestors, while the candles in the installation C'eri enclose the prayers of people never met by the artist. Lapidi such as C'eri are pre-existing elements recovered, which through the artist’s intervention take on new meanings. Scattered messages of the artist’s past are disseminated in space creating a sort of intimate map that can be completed by everyone. Please Rewind by Perla Sardella is a series of semi still images that the artist imprints in a suspended and infinite temporality. The video installation was born from a residence she participated in 2017 in Salemi (Sicily), where was housed, until this year, the archive of the video library Mondo Kim of New York. Sardella has come into contact with the original VHC of the collection that has never been rewinded by the last person who looked at them, despite the request "be kind please rewind" on each of these. Thus became involuntary testimonies that leave traces to posterity, they stimulate curiosity towards images that extrapolate from their visual context and become communicate messages not immediately readable like privileged elements of a media archaeology.