I felt as if I had snuck into an experimental laboratory written and dictated by Lewis Carroll, an eccentric plaything, who touches the cupidity of contending with the order of the cosmos, with the arrière-goût acre of ὕβϱις. As if, at any moment, an alienated and amoral scientist could pop up, amidst the bubbling of the ampoules, the monstrous screeching sounds, the microbiological cultures, distorted visions and beddings on the ground, ready to transform the visitor into a granguinal creature.
Giulia Tomasello, Future Flora, 2016, courtesy GALLLERIAPIÙ
GALLLERIAPIÙ IN WONDERLAND opens at GALLLERIAPIÙ which involves various international personalities, such as Hannah Hansdotter, the interdisciplinary collective CROSSLUCID, the bio-designer Giulia Tomasello, the artist S()fia Braga and the transmedia project by Valerio Maiolo. All of this is supported by workshops, performances, podcasts with the contribution of Lavinia Savini, Sara Ottonello, Simona Squadrito.
S()fia Braga, Forehead Vulva Channeling Research, 2022, still from video, courtesy GALLLERIAPIÙ
I am welcomed by Dwellers between waters, video art by the CROSSLUCID collective composed by Sylwana Zybura and Tomas C. Toth. From the screen comes a harsh and scratchy high note, which seems to be the Odyssean sirenoid chant, mindful of the advice of the sorceress Circe. The spell is followed by figures, created thanks to artificial intelligence. These are a change, intersecting structures, a muttering pompous transformation of denunciation of the truth. Among the inlets of the figurative boiling is perceived flesh, water, sometimes gems, glass, human faces, gold, shining splendor with the lure of lapis lazuli and corals, fish eyes that almost seem like a mine of strangeness. The user is led to experience a real chimera of the migrant, in the waves of emptiness, between the boffice rosy of the bodily quagmire, of consternation made precious and material, and changes, again, caressing the unconscious and shifting it at the same speed as the mutable wave, of the imperfect and sudden result of the amusement of associations.
CROSSLUCID, Sentinel Sigil – Latent Imaginal, 2022, courtesy GALLLERIAPIÙ
The viscous and transfigured must persists. Hanna Hansdotter, recalling the Scandinavian glass blowing traditions of Glasriket since 1742, creates sculptures in molten glass that follow an expected, but not certain, pattern. A vitreous magmatic fluid rises and falls: it appears to be a volcanic cone and drags behind exhausted mirror bubbles, creating an almost erotic development. Gasps of sobs, body tangle, mass, shiny and wet. It reminds me of Giovanni Pascoli’s Gelsomino notturno: “The petals are closed, slightly crumpled; inside the soft and secret urn, I don’t know what new happiness is brooding”. The colors mix, from pink to yellow, it looks like a tired flower, ready for its end. A jumble that runs, a big breath, like a pot of marmalade left on the stove for too long.
Hanna Hansdotter, Incommodious Print, 2020, solo show at CFHILL in Stockholm, photo by Björn Petrén, courtesy GALLLERIAPIÙ
Future Flora by Giulia Tomasello becomes the metamorphosis of microorganisms. Bacteria and viruses are part of the body and make up the microflora, which take care of preserving human health, as well as the soft and secret urn. Rebellious, it makes the probiotic become wearable, through the microencapsulation of this in a compound, which thus becomes an ally of female biophilia. Bold and seditious act, which leads the feminine secret to become a weapon. Because, after all, quoting Sigmund Freud “The foundation of the taboo is a forbidden action towards which there is a strong inclination in the unconscious”. An iconography of what has been done and what remains to be done; undoubtedly is the contribution of Future Flora as a variable that contributes to the redemption of female intimacy.
Giulia Tomasello, Future Flora, 2016, photo by Tom Mannion, 2016, courtesy GALLLERIAPIÙ
In this regard, S()fia Braga‘s Forehead Vulva Channeling Research, caricatured and genuine, is the search for psychophysical well-being through alternative channels, such as the caliber of pleasure centers, through a graceful physical investigation that involves intermediality. Noteworthy is the combination of social media platforms and the sociological and provocative link, to become a performance at the media level. The breaking down of the conventional and standardized common thinking of the body, of pleasure and its use.
S()fia Braga, Forehead Vulva Channeling Research, 2021, still from video, courtesy GALLLERIAPIÙ
Arriving, then, without attachment to the physical world but working on the impalpable oscillations of sound and the virtual, to Valerio Maiolo with Finite Fields. His research is dedicated to augmented reality, where we can visually perceive sound according to geometric synthesis thanks to the movement of vibrations.
Valerio Maiolo, VR-mony, web application in virtual reality, 2022, collaboration with Francesca Del Gaudio, courtesy GALLLERIAPIÙ
GALLLERIAPIÙ IN WONDERLAND is a challenging mixture of different intentions, of which the fil rouge is abstruse at first glance that leads the personalities to coexist in the same space, sometimes in a chaotic and tangled way, thus going to feed more and more the vision of creation wildly bizarre and fairy-tale, and paradoxically a statement of tangibility. The visitor experiences an extraordinary itinerary between the real and the virtual, only to find himself thrown into the severe reality as soon as he leaves the exhibition space.
Info:
A.A.V.V., GALLLERIAPIÙ IN WONDERLAND
09/05/2023-17/06/2023
GALLLERIAPIÙ
Via del Porto 48 a/b, Bologna
www.gallleriapiu.com
Born in 1999. She falls in love with art by looking at her mother’s paint. She’s studying History of Art at the Ca’ Foscari University (Venice) and in the meantime divulges online videos of art pills. She deals with contemporary art as a critic, curator and artist.
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