IMAGINING PROMETHEUS |
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"The
spark of fire, the root of all the Arts, he stole, he gave to mortals..." Prometheus is the Titan who carried of Jove's fire to give it to menkind and enabled man's capacity to produce fire, to create light and all the arts. Imagining Prometheus gives life to a story that speaks of light, taking the Sun and fire as mythological reference points in the cultures in the world. Robert Wilson has created the architecture of the figured landscape, within which a dialogue can happen between the creations of the various artists, who come from Europe to Asia, from America to Africa, to Australia. The emotional component of man's rapport with light is revealed, unconfined by geography or culture. A musical score envelopes the space, an architectonic structure of sound composed by Giovanni Sollima: a hypnotic cycle. Almost a meditative incipit, Moni Ovadia's installation, with the visual sensibility of Gianni Carluccio, is an invitation to the transcendental connotations of the Light, especially as treated in the three monotheistic religions. Then one enters a white room where Russian artist Vadim Fishkin creates an effect of compressed time, in which one can experience, in a few seconds of rapid acceleration, the changes of light that occur naturally through the course of an entire day. |
This confusion of light and time leads to a dark, lava-sand landscape under the high galleries of the Palazzo della Ragione. Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka evokes the mythical figures of Sango and Ongun, divinities of light and creativity in Yoruban mithology, where fire came first not from the heaven's, but from the Earth's core. Prometheus then seems to appear in the form of a moon that revolves around Saturn: in Pierluigi Bottazzi and Ritsue Mishima's installation light seems to solidify in transparent glass shapes. Brazilian artist Lygia Pape evokes the sense of primal stupor felt before a light made of millions of golden rays, linen in metal threads that from the arch high above descend to the floor. Light takes the disturbing form of cold technology, essentially made of fiber optics, in the installation of the Australian artist Robyn Backen that seems to evoke to our eyes the first light of original, universal chaos. Indonesian artist Heri Dono, working with master Sukasman, calls in mind the sacred ceremonial matrix of the shadow puppet theatre of Java in which the Dalang, priest of the light, manipulates the shadow, mediator between the world of men and those of the spirits and gods.
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At the back of a black tunnel Iranian artist Shirin Neshat's visual poem is projected: while her body hosts images of war, a woman immolates herself with fire and from her ashes her image reforms in a continual cycle of sacrifice and rebirth. Fabrizio Plessi's installation, with music by Philip Glass, fills the entire surface of the Loggia dei Mercanti. A fleet of canoes descend from a distant sun to carry the fire to earth and to renew humanity's magical experience that has been lost in the passage of time. When one finally returns to the Piazza dei Mercanti, five sculptures created by the Milanese group e123 propose a declension of the five senses of light. The blue sun is the emblem of this exhibition of light: it is a stupefying image combining nature and artifice. Today it is only through the artist that we can explore that intermediate space in which light dwells between its roots in myth and the products of the most advanced technology, between the natural light of the sun and the countless forms of industrial fire. (FL) You can buy the catalogue. Find out more... PRODUCTION
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