Le Son des Ténèbres - Roberto Ciaccio
Exhibition at Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica, Palazzo Poli, Rome
The collaboration with Roberto Ciaccio has emerged from a strong interest towards his practice: through his works, in their meta-linguistic tension and constant interrogation of their tools, Ciaccio paradoxically puts into question - compared with the philosophy of Walter Benjamin - the procedures and outcomes of print making, directing the visual and mental path of the work towards the technical irreproducibility and uniqueness, redefining the concept of the original.
The Le Son des Ténèbres exhibition - held at the National Institute for Graphics in Rome, in its prestigious Palazzo Poli (Fontana di Trevi) - presents a body of work (1990-2008) created in collaboration with Giorgio Upiglio, well-known printer from Milan, and a constant dialogue tightened with the philosophy (Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, Remo Bodei) and with the music, from which originates the work Leçons de Ténèbres / Le Son des Ténèbres.Revenants being presented here for the first time. The exhibition, in which the path, the choice of works and the suggestion of sounds are visually induced by different brightness of metal plates, evokes the intensely musical and meditative atmosphere that characterizes the whole work of the artist.
In the first room the severe nature of the iron plates of the work entitled Stations for the Cross is mediated by reflections of light coming from the nearby Trevi Fountain. In the middle of the second room is situated a large table / board - made by bending and welding the same iron plates used by Ciaccio for his works (130 x 187 cm) - which is intended to collect the flow of small sheets of Leçons de Ténèbres / Le Son des Ténèbres.Revenants, an artwork conceived as a musical score of revenance. The work is characterized by a continuum of sequential values of timbre and color that modulate the reveal of the figure in an infinite "difference".
In the last of the three rooms some copper plates are laid on the floor to create a variable, almost liquid reflection of the exhibited artworks that would act as a counterpoint to the first room. The sheets are thought to be the base for the piano as well: during the vernissage, the composers Philip Corner and Daniele Lombardi have performed their original scores inspired by the work of Roberto Ciaccio, and Antonio Ballista has performed the "Dream" of John Cage at the piano.
