History of the Night and the Fate of Comets is the title of the project exhibition project of the Italian Pavilion at the 59. International Art Exhibition – La Biennale, open to the public from 23 April to 27 November 2022, promoted by the Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture. The exhibition, curated by Eugenio Viola, for the first time in the history of the Italian Pavilion, presents the work of a single artist: Gian Maria Tosatti. The curator has chosen to propose a project that would function as a powerful statement on contemporaneity, able to give a courageous reading of the present and to give Italy a new identity. The exhibition project crosses different artistic languages and investigates the contradictions of contemporaneity and the relationship between man and nature.
Storia della Notte e Destino delle Comete (History of the Night and the Destiny of Comets) is a large-scale environmental installation specially conceived for the spaces of the Tese delle Vergini, occupying its entire surface, and the entire surface, and proposes a vision of the current state of humanity and its future prospects. The work is configured as an intermediate device that contains and and merges a plurality of languages, as is usual in Tosatti’s research, from literary references to the visual arts to music and performance. A complex experiential narrative machine that leads the visitor on a sensitive journey, at times familiar and other times partly disorienting, with the aim of offering a new awareness and generating concrete reflections on the possible destiny of human civilization, poised between n the dreams and mistakes of the past and the promises of a future still partly to be written. A much-discussed and topical theme, the work investigates the difficult balance between man and nature, sustainable development and the land, ethics and profit, proposing an aesthetic reading of this scenario and offering a platform for the creation of a new world.
The exhibition is structured with a theatrical set-up that divides the narrative into a prologue and two acts: The Story of the Night and The Fate of Comets. All the topics dealt with, the ideas that emerged and the reflections developed will be collected on a website that will always be available to anyone who wants to research into alternative models of life and development. At the same time, a significant corpus of audio-visual documents of the work will be produced, from its realization and its presentation to the public. The programme of activities open to the public will be communicated at a later date and constantly updated.
For more information visit www.creativitacontemporanea.beniculturali.it
CREDITS
– Eugenio Viola, curator of the Italian Pavilion at the Biennale Arte 2022 and Gian Maria Tosatti, artist Italian Pavilion at the Biennale Arte 2022 Photo by Elena Andreato
– Gian Maria Tosatti, photo by Maddalena Tartaro
– Storia della Notte e Destino delle Comete, photo by Gian Maria Tosatti
