The Tilt of Time
Wall-text for the The Tilt of Time exhibition ​
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The Tilt of Time is an exhibition that investigates the multifaceted nature of time, designed to question and ‘tilt’ preconceived notions, through the works of Giulio Aldinucci, Fabrizio Ajello and Francesco D'Isa, Chiara Bettazzi, Alessandro Gandolfi, Jacopo Jenna, and Namsal Siedlecki.
Cyclical, eternal, present, linear, fragmented, distorted, biological and personal - time in its various forms and meanings, has been the territory of analysis in philosophy, religion, science and art in every era. The exhibition raises questions on how we can give shape to the complex nature of time and how forms change and evolve in the flux of time. Do these forms also undergo changes in their meaning? Does our time have a form? The temporal nature of our existence is a mystery that connects us all. The past is “no longer”, the future is “not yet”, and the present is a vanishing “now”.
Through the exploration of six research in visual, music and performative art, The Tilt of Time proposes reflections that range from the transformation of objects and their meanings over time and history to the current role of artificial intelligence in the creation of images and its relationship with the visual arts. The exhibition also touches on the geopolitical tensions of our present, and explores the definition of personal time through sound and performative experiences.
The Tilt of Time
Exhibition walkthrough included in the exhibition handout
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The exhibition opens with a site-specific installation created for the spaces of the school by Chiara Bettazzi, titled Shift. Through the use of objects from the institute's warehouses, combined with evocative objects from Bettazzi’s studio, new forms are generated through their arrangements into eclectic assemblages. In Shift, we witness a relinquishing of control to the passage of time, objects are left to exist in the exhibition space; they remain free to break, or fall due to gravity's pull.The large installation gives new life to the objects, like an expanded still-life immersing us into the passage of time.
The work is followed by Alessandro Gandolfi’s photographic stories, presenting images selected from reportages he has made in four different areas of the world. Gandolfi’s reporter and journalistic activity narrates multiple areas, exploring critical issues and proposing fracture lines that cross our planet. For The Tilt of Time we selected images from four stories, The Baltic Question (2022), Climatic Change in Italy (2013 - 2019), Where Taiwan Touches China (2022), and Syrians in Limbo (2019), that reveal geopolitical tensions of our present time and, through the lives of others, question the crises of our contemporary society.
The skylights that characterise the architecture of IED's long corridor host the work of Fabrizio Ajello and Francesco D'Isa, titled Upside Down Wells. The two artists explored the nocturnal nature of images generated by dreams, living in an expanded and fragmented time. These dreams, by the artists and the master’s class, were collected and translated into prompts for Artificial Intelligence programmes to create images (TTI). The visual archive resulting from this encounter was reinterpreted and translated into complex drawings that find space on the structure of the building. The dialogue between man and technology brings us into a future (already present) that weaves together antique and contemporary and challenges the coexistence of a new frontier of technological devices with one of the most ancient forms of representation such as drawing.
The exhibition concludes with Soffio, the sculpture of a glass-blown head, by Namsal Siedlecki. Soffio finds its genesis through its relationship with the past in a passage of transformation of forms and materials. The artist worked with the residual cavity of a bronze sculpture. Thanks to his intervention with a glass blower, the negative form of the bronze statue became the model for a new glass sculpture. The sculpture’s history is preserved as the imprints of its transformation remain. Placed at the end of the main corridor of IED Firenze, the sculpture invites viewers to confront the interaction between past and present, and the continuous mutation of forms.
The exhibition is accompanied by two performance events conceived for the spaces of the Strozzina at Palazzo Strozzi: Saturday 11 November (9.30-8.00 pm) the sleep-concert by Giulio Aldinucci and Thursday 23 November (7.00-9.00 pm) the durational performance by Jacopo Jenna.
Giulio Aldinucci, composer and sound artist, explores time as a perceptive duration by proposing a sleep-concert, a live performance for the duration of the night. His experimental electroacoustic compositions will accompany visitors in their perception of nocturnal, dreamlike, dilated, meditative time. Aldinucci's creation of a soundscape reverberates the sound memories of places visited by the artist. The use of samples and field recordings allow him to create an immersive bridge between history and the present moment.
The body and its movements, which mark time and investigate space, are the objects of research in Jacopo Jenna's performance. The artist’s creation Here and Now, a performance of long duration, confronts the different spaces of the Strozzina, where the actions performed by performers are interwoven with a discontinuous musical composition between the rooms, a choreography of lights and a score of actions for the audience. The continuous cycle of movements, sounds and lights leaves room for the audience to interact with the performers in the construction of the event. Time becomes a concrete participatory experience, an investigation that everyone can embody and measure.