The relationship between artifice and nature, so central to contemporary philosophical reflections, finds in Giorgio Andreotta Calò (Venezia, 1979) an interpreter capable of translating theoretical complexities into effective visual devices. At Palazzo Bentivoglio, a private cultural institution in Bologna born from the owners’ desire to share their collection through an underground space dedicated to temporary exhibitions, a window gallery (BENTIVOGLIO garage) and a library open by appointment, the artist has created an installation version of the film “IΚΑΡΟΣ (Icarus)”, conceived to expand its already complex interrogation of the boundaries between scientific documentation and mythological narration, between naturalistic observation and the cultural construction of meaning.
Giorgio Andreotta Calò, “ΊΚΑΡΟΣ (Icarus)”, Palazzo Bentivoglio, Bologna, ph. Carlo Favero, courtesy Palazzo Bentivoglio
Within a glass pavilion located in the recently acquired roof garden, Andreotta Calò activates an experience that proceeds through temporal and symbolic stratifications: the film, shot in 2020-21 in an abandoned facility for breeding lepidoptera in the Netherlands, projected here on a screen that occupies an entire wall, finds its natural performative expansion in the installation of seventy moth cocoons destined to complete their metamorphosis there during the days of the event. The choice to use a disused space, also close to demolition, reverberates the dynamics of transformation and transience at the center of the artist’s research. The conceptual framework of the work derives from the superimposition of two apparently distant reference systems: on one hand the rigorous entomological observation conducted by expert Enzo Moretto and young autodidact Bart Coppens, on the other the reworking of the Ovidian myth of Daedalus and Icarus through the recited reading of the “Metamorphoses”. In this process of hybridization between scientific knowledge and archetypal narrative, Andreotta Calò reflects on how our perception of nature is mediated by cultural constructs, by coding systems that translate sensible experience into predetermined interpretative categories.
Giorgio Andreotta Calò, “ΊΚΑΡΟΣ (Icarus)”, Palazzo Bentivoglio, Bologna, ph. Carlo Favero, courtesy Palazzo Bentivoglio
The physical presence of the cocoons, mysterious entities in quiescent transformation, introduces a dimension of unpredictability into the predetermination of the cinematic device, generating what we could define as an expanded experience, where the linear temporality of the projection synchronizes with the biological rhythms of metamorphosis. The work, therefore, does not limit itself to representing the transformation process, but incorporates it, making the time of the exhibition the time of biological becoming. Significant appears the choice of mercury vapor lights, which simulate the lunar light frequency used by moths for orientation during nocturnal migrations. This technical precision testifies to the artist’s attention to the phenomenological aspects of animal experience, but at the same time recalls the tragic core of the myth: as Icarus is deceived by proximity to the sun, so moths can be disoriented by artificial light sources that compromise their survival capabilities and adaptation to the environment. The installation is therefore configured as a liminal space where attraction and perdition, orientation and bewilderment interweave in a dialectic that crosses both the biological and symbolic dimensions.
Giorgio Andreotta Calò, “ΊΚΑΡΟΣ (Icarus)”, 2020-21, 30’23”, film still, courtesy of the artist
The master-apprentice relationship that structures the filmic narration exceeds the aseptic transfer of technical competencies to invest deeper questions, linked to cultural transmission and identity construction. The dialogue between the expert entomologist and the young man substantiates a reflection on learning processes that proceeds through mimesis and identification, where knowledge sediments through bodily practices and relational rituals that recall the initiatory dynamics of traditional societies. In this way, the scientific dimension of entomological observation is charged with anthropological valences, interrogating the mechanisms through which human communities organize and transmit knowledge. The simultaneous presence of the film, the cocoons and then the ephemeral moths (breeding species designed in laboratories for the textile industry, lacking the oral apparatus to feed and functional only for their own reproduction) generates a splitting that problematizes the relationship between documentation, representation and presence. Visitors find themselves immersed in an environment where the projection of images recorded in the Dutch hangar overlaps with the possibility of witnessing in real time the births of the lepidoptera: grafting the present perceptual experience onto a documented past, the work underlines how every observation act is contaminated from the start by mnemonic traces and imaginative projections.
Giorgio Andreotta Calò, “ΊΚΑΡΟΣ (Icarus)”, 2020-21, 30’23”, film still, courtesy of the artist
The opening to the public of the exhibition space at twilight introduces, moreover, a ritual suggestion that recalls the magical and initiatory valences traditionally associated with metamorphosis. The choice to make the work accessible only at sunset, beyond being functional to the optimal visibility of the film in a room flooded by natural light during the day, synchronizes the visitor’s experience with the circadian rhythms of the organisms involved, creating a shared temporality that favors forms of interspecies empathy rarely experienceable in contemporary urban contexts. At the same time, the nocturnal dimension, consubstantial with moments of transition, evokes a liminal perceptual condition activating different sensory modalities and opening indetermination spaces where the boundary between real and imaginary becomes more porous. The reflection on domesticated nature starts from a crucial aspect of the operation: the species used in the installation are all farmed, organisms that have lost the ability to survive in natural environments and that exist only within human productive circuits. This condition of biological artificiality raises disturbing questions about domestication processes that have subverted terrestrial ecosystems, generating hybrid life forms, refractory to traditional taxonomic distinctions.
Giorgio Andreotta Calò, “ΊΚΑΡΟΣ (Icarus)”, Palazzo Bentivoglio, Bologna, ph. Carlo Favero, courtesy Palazzo Bentivoglio
The moths born during the exhibition are destined for a very brief life, devoid of the possibilities that would characterize their existence in natural contexts. This vital precariousness (at this point one would say existential) confers on the installation a poignant tragedy, in which the ethical contradictions of our relationships with other living species reverberate, revealing how our aesthetic fascination with natural processes is often founded on forms of control and manipulation that deny the ontological autonomy of the organisms involved. From this point of view, ΊΚΑΡΟΣ (Icarus) transcends the fictional dimension of artistic representation to configure itself as a philosophical interrogation of the limits and responsibilities of human action in a world where the separation between nature and culture has now definitively dissolved.
Info:
Giorgio Andreotta Calò. ΊΚΑΡΟΣ (Icarus)
11-21/05/2025
Opening hours: Wednesday-Saturday, 20.00-23.00
Palazzo Bentivoglio
via del Borgo di San Pietro 1C – Bologna
www.palazzobentivoglio.org
Graduated in art history at DAMS in Bologna, city where she continued to live and work, she specialized in Siena with Enrico Crispolti. Curious and attentive to the becoming of the contemporary, she believes in the power of art to make life more interesting and she loves to explore its latest trends through dialogue with artists, curators and gallery owners. She considers writing a form of reasoning and analysis that reconstructs the connection between the artist’s creative path and the surrounding context.
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