SuperNatural Open Walls
Luca Locatelli, Charlotte Dumas, Piero Percoco, Matthieu Gafsou, Hayley Eichenmaum, Maria Lax and Petrina Hicks
September 7 to 14 | Tue. – Sat. 11 a.m. – 8 p.m.
SuperNatural Open Walls, an event organized as part of Estate Fiorentina 2023, promoted by the City of Florence, and curated by Irene Alison and Paolo Cagnacci, opens from September 7 to 14, 2023. The project has been co-financed by the European Union – European Regional Development Fund, as part of the Operational Program Metropolitan Cities 2014-2020, realized with the collaboration of Forma Edizioni and the technical support of the hotel Fornace Suite and Ditta Artigianale.
© Charlotte Dumas, AO, 2021.
The concept of SuperNatural, imagined as a multitude of directions and nuances, was the unifying theme of the cycle of exhibitions that Irene Alison organized and curated, with Paolo Cagnacci, for Rifugio Digitale gallery in Florence in 2022-2023.
Facing an increasingly uncertain horizon between pandemics and climate crises, this theme became ground zero for a visual reflection, through the work of the photographers exhibited, on contemporary living, which investigated our relationship with space as much as the way in which we project ourselves in time: from the anthropization of the landscape to the need to make sustainable choices for the future of the planet. From the dream of a return to the origins, in flight from the paradoxes of progress, all the way to the most extreme frontiers of science, the dialogue between what is “natural” and what is “artificial” has revealed itself, in the pictures illuminating the screens of Rifugio Digitale, to be more complicated than ever. But the path of SuperNatural did not just explore the conflicts and opportunities that open around nature and its uses and abuses, but also revealed a horizon of imagination and research that concerns the dialogue between real and surreal in a world in which, between the metaverse and artificial intelligence, the reality surrounding us grows ever more contradictory and hyperbolic.
Today, with SuperNatural Open Walls, Rifugio Digitale wants to open its walls metaphorically to transform the entire district into an outdoor gallery: projected on the walls of the buildings of San Niccolò, the pictures exhibited by the artists in the cycle – Luca Locatelli, Charlotte Dumas, Piero Percoco, Matthieu Gafsou, Hayley Eichenmaum, Maria Lax and Petrina Hicks – will dialogue with the city’s architecture, opening new horizons of awareness and comparison, as much on contemporary visual languages as on the subjects of their expression.
The 13 works of the video-mapping installation:
1.
Charlotte Dumas, Shio, 2018, video
The Charlotte Dumas’ love for horses, has kept her following on their traces for over twenty years, even taking her to the remote shores of southeastern Japan, on the island of Yonaguni, to investigate the role that these creatures, whose history for thousands of years has woven itself into that of mankind, have in our world today. With the wild and primitive dimension that expresses itself in the horses and in the landscape, in her trilogy on exhibition at Rifugio Digitale – consisting of the projects Shio, Yorishiro and Ao – the human dimension takes shape in the immature, quicksilver bodies of three little girls whose relationship with the animals and with the place seems to be the theme of the story. Free spirits like the horses, the girls, with their youthful courage and resilience in a world suspended between extreme nature and legendary memories, represent three strong characters and three different stages in feminine development: 5, 10 and 15 years. It is a single story of learning, the heroines of which symbolically represent the young women of the world who overcome obstacles to achieve their goals, but also the possibility – in the ageless knowledge that enables them to listen to the earth and speak the language of other species – to create a bridge between nature and culture.
2.
Piero Percoco, Lenzuola, 2021, video (NFT)
Photographer Piero Percoco’s video work was made in the artist’s hometown of Sannicandro di Bari in the spring of 2021. Born in Puglia in 1987, Percoco debuted on the international photographic scene through his Instagram account @therainbow_is_underestimated, the channel through which he continues to pursue his personal study. Between the Coney Island of Wee Gee, the suburban America of Stephen Shore and the southern liturgies of William Eggleston, Percoco’s Puglia loses its geographical borders to become a place of the soul, a place that, for the photographer, is at the same time “home” and unexplored territory. Writing in his visual language through video and photography, Percoco constructs a world of lazy Sundays, of bellies and butts, of pasta and sauce and clothes hung out to dry, of ripe figs that appear like alien creatures with their disturbing sensuality, from whose bodies fruits and colors overflow, without filters or half measures, in all their brutal, lush naturalness.
3.
Piero Percoco, Tuffo, 2021, video (NFT)
Photographer Piero Percoco’s video work was made in the archaeological area of Roca Vecchia in the province of Lecce, specifically near the Grotta della Poesia in the summer of 2021. Born in Puglia in 1987, Percoco debuted on the international photographic scene through his Instagram account @therainbow_is_underestimated, the channel through which he continues to pursue his personal study. Between the Coney Island of Wee Gee, the suburban America of Stephen Shore and the southern liturgies of William Eggleston, Percoco’s Puglia loses its geographical borders to become a place of the soul, a place that, for the photographer, is at the same time “home” and unexplored territory. Writing in his visual language through video and photography, Percoco constructs a world of lazy Sundays, of bellies and butts, of pasta and sauce and clothes hung out to dry, of ripe figs that appear like alien creatures with their disturbing sensuality, from whose bodies fruits and colors overflow, without filters or half measures, in all their brutal, lush naturalness.
4.
Piero Percoco, Gonfiabili, 2021, video (NFT)
Photographer Piero Percoco’s video work was made in Torre Canne in the province of Brindisi in the summer of 2021. Born in Puglia in 1987, Percoco debuted on the international photographic scene through his Instagram account @therainbow_is_underestimated, the channel through which he continues to pursue his personal study. Between the Coney Island of Wee Gee, the suburban America of Stephen Shore and the southern liturgies of William Eggleston, Percoco’s Puglia loses its geographical borders to become a place of the soul, a place that, for the photographer, is at the same time “home” and unexplored territory. Writing in his visual language through video and photography, Percoco constructs a world of lazy Sundays, of bellies and butts, of pasta and sauce and clothes hung out to dry, of ripe figs that appear like alien creatures with their disturbing sensuality, from whose bodies fruits and colors overflow, without filters or half measures, in all their brutal, lush naturalness.
5.
Luca Locatelli, Nuclear Ride, 2019, video (NFT)
People enjoying the swing ride installed inside a cooling tower on the former site of a nuclear power plant that never went online. Wunderland Kalkar is an amusement park in Germany that receive around 600,000 visitors each year. Germany has embarked on an energy revolution and aims to be green powered by 2050. Fear for nuclear power grew in the country after Japan’s Fukushima accident–all German nuclear power plants will be shut down by 2022. Photographer Luca Locatelli’s video work was made in the German city of Kalkar in 2019.
6.
Hayley Eichenbaum, Blue Moon, 2013-2023, video (NFT)
Blue Moon is a video work of a kinetic sculpture and is part of the larger project The Mother Road carried out by Hayley Eichenabuam from 2013 to 2023. The gravity-defying figure is made from real “Blue Moon” flavored ice cream: an ice cream cone and a hidden electromagnetic device. The shot shows the ice cream cone levitating upside down just above the set, rotating and hovering, but never completing its fall. Blue Moon is a study of the relational tension between real and surreal, without the use of CGI (Computer-generated Imagery) or traditional animation technologies.
7.
Charlotte Dumas, AO, 2021, video
The Charlotte Dumas’ love for horses, has kept her following on their traces for over twenty years, even taking her to the remote shores of southeastern Japan, on the island of Yonaguni, to investigate the role that these creatures, whose history for thousands of years has woven itself into that of mankind, have in our world today. With the wild and primitive dimension that expresses itself in the horses and in the landscape, in her trilogy on exhibition at Rifugio Digitale – consisting of the projects Shio, Yorishiro and Ao – the human dimension takes shape in the immature, quicksilver bodies of three little girls whose relationship with the animals and with the place seems to be the theme of the story. Free spirits like the horses, the girls, with their youthful courage and resilience in a world suspended between extreme nature and legendary memories, represent three strong characters and three different stages in feminine development: 5, 10 and 15 years. It is a single story of learning, the heroines of which symbolically represent the young women of the world who overcome obstacles to achieve their goals, but also the possibility – in the ageless knowledge that enables them to listen to the earth and speak the language of other species – to create a bridge between nature and culture.
8.
Petrina Hicks, Gloss, video.
Rewriting myths, such as the stories of Medusa or of Adam and Eve, and choosing animals with strong symbolic connotations like snakes, cats and birds as the co-protagonists of her shots, the australian artist Petrina Hicks’s photographs allude to the complexity of woman’s identity and the spiritual nature of her relationship with animals. According to the photographer’s vision, animals are closer to the “divine” than humans because they exist in a state of pure awareness, and women are closer to animals because they are more capable of understanding that we exist in the same single continuum.
9.
Maria Lax, Taken by the Tide, 2023, video
Returning to the city of her birth after many years abroad, Lax realized that the beloved places of her childhood were gone, and that the map of her memories no longer matched that of current geography. Taken by the Tide is a voyage between space and memory, in search of a home that probably no longer exists. The artist has always been attracted by popular legends and folklore, by the sense of a collective identity transmitted from generation to generation through storytelling, and she takes us into a universe that appears familiar and at the same time hopelessly alien where, between the ancestral power of nature, and the glimpses we get of phantoms from the past, the rising waves of the incoming tide seem to push the artist farther and farther away, toward the open sea.
10.
Luca Locatelli, GeoThermal Clouds, 2019, video (NFT)
Steam clouds rise from geothermal wells at Hellisheidi Power Station in Iceland. Being one of the world’s most nature-oriented countries, Iceland gets approximately 87% of its hot water for households from geothermal energy. This geothermal power station is Iceland’s largest and the third largest in the world. It has been designed to blend in, pipes were painted green to minimize the visual impact on the landscape, and a circular water system extract and returns water underground. With energy production driving the climate crisis, finding a way to produce cleaner energy around the globe is one of the main challenges for the future. Geothermal energy could be an option in countries that can tap volcanic activity instead of coal or oil.
11.
Charlotte Dumas, AO, 2021, video
The Charlotte Dumas’ love for horses, has kept her following on their traces for over twenty years, even taking her to the remote shores of southeastern Japan, on the island of Yonaguni, to investigate the role that these creatures, whose history for thousands of years has woven itself into that of mankind, have in our world today. With the wild and primitive dimension that expresses itself in the horses and in the landscape, in her trilogy on exhibition at Rifugio Digitale – consisting of the projects Shio, Yorishiro and Ao – the human dimension takes shape in the immature, quicksilver bodies of three little girls whose relationship with the animals and with the place seems to be the theme of the story. Free spirits like the horses, the girls, with their youthful courage and resilience in a world suspended between extreme nature and legendary memories, represent three strong characters and three different stages in feminine development: 5, 10 and 15 years. It is a single story of learning, the heroines of which symbolically represent the young women of the world who overcome obstacles to achieve their goals, but also the possibility – in the ageless knowledge that enables them to listen to the earth and speak the language of other species – to create a bridge between nature and culture.
12.
Maria Lax, Taken by the Tide, 2023, video
Returning to the city of her birth after many years abroad, Lax realized that the beloved places of her childhood were gone, and that the map of her memories no longer matched that of current geography. Taken by the Tide is a voyage between space and memory, in search of a home that probably no longer exists. The artist has always been attracted by popular legends and folklore, by the sense of a collective identity transmitted from generation to generation through storytelling, and she takes us into a universe that appears familiar and at the same time hopelessly alien where, between the ancestral power of nature, and the glimpses we get of phantoms from the past, the rising waves of the incoming tide seem to push the artist farther and farther away, toward the open sea.
13.
Matthieu Gafsou, Smartphone, 2023, video (NFT)
The H+ project explores the world of Transhumanism. In many countries, photographer Matthieu Gafsou has observed and documented the people, objects and concepts associated with this movement. The video work was created from a photograph of the entire series. A high-resolution image made in a special way: a film about Transhumanism is projected on a smartphone and then the smartphone is scanned. The resulting video from the photograph highlights the gigantic stream of pixels that, in a sense, shapes our reality today. The total loss of figuration reminds us that this reality is far from real.
