Design, development and production of a system of display "plinths" in dialogue with artist Rossella Biscotti, for a series of blown glass works, cable conductors and a new sound installation
For the exhibition at Fabra i Coats, curated by Joana Hurtado, Biscotti presents two large installations, The City and The Journey, accompanied by two respective sculptural works, Trees on Land and Drifting. In between, a work connects them physically and conceptually: A Conductor, a recycled cable from a decommissioned nuclear power station that is connected to the Art Centre's electrical supply and provides power for the entire exhibition.
Drifting is a series of larval-like sculptures, reminiscent of enlarged and magnified aquatic organisms that make up plankton, which is usually carried by the tides and currents of oceans and seas. Installed here to accompany The Journey, these works highlight the fragility of microscopic life and immerse us in the undulations of the sea by paradoxically relying on the lightness of air, suggested in this case by both the blown Murano glass that these pieces consist of as well as the reference to the little-known fact that plankton is responsible for between 50% and 85% of the oxygen released into the atmosphere each year.
To set up these objects, we worked on a display that allows both the transparencies and the reflections and refractions of these objects, which seem to come from another world, to be enhanced at the same time. We used soft devices, which support and at the same time accommodate the works, creating a backdrop that changes role and function depending on the position of the visitor, and which allow natural light to enhance the beauty of these objects.
Hand blown Murano glass, metal, laminate sheets. Variable dimensions.
Copper cables, from a nuclear power plant in Lithuania, which was shut down and auctioned off as “unneeded assets”, were bought by the artist, melted down and purified to produce 291 kilos of pure copper, which was used to make a new industrial power cable, which became the artwork entitled A Conductor. The recycled power cable, though invisible to the public, thus provides the energy for the entire exhibition, linking the two floors of the venue both conceptually and physically. It is a gesture which produces a friction between seemingly distant social processes that typically remain opaque to the citizenry and the spaces and audiences of art institutions, which here are materially and physically integrated and implicated into the complex life cycle of the productive system.
For this project, five glass artworks connected to a series of electric cables, we worked on a display that consists of a system of plinths that support the works by raising them off the ground making them float in space, thus allowing the glass to be properly illuminated and displayed, the system we designed is made by solid steel supports and long “V” shape element made of ceramic slabs.
The Journey is a long-term project that has taken several different forms and that is presented here in installation form for the first time. In 2010 the artist was awarded a 20-ton block of marble from the Michelangelo quarry in Carrara (Italy). In 2021, this rock was extracted, transported to the coast and loaded onto a boat. The boat Diligence then set sail for three days on a symbolic route between Italy, Malta, Tunisia and Libya, and finally at a set point released the marble block into the Mediterranean Sea. The sound recorded on this journey, beginning with the extraction of the marble in Carrara, then along the shores of Malta and Tunisia, and finally in the middle of the sea, is the starting point of the immersive eight channel sonic composition presented. In this configuration of The Journey artist Rossella Biscotti and musician Attila Faravelli have reconceptualised some of the objects that had been played during the sound performance. These pieces have been included in this exhibition for the first time: The Journey’s objects (Drum, Antenna, Amphoric Detectors, Black Box).
Together with Attila Faravelli, sound designer and artist, we worked on a way to keep together some technical elements that were part of a performance, such as amphoric detectors, an antenna, a drum and black box. The rail is a support and a case for all the equipment.
Rossella Biscotti
Alessandro Mason, Pietro Lora
Fabra i Coats: Contemporary Art Centre of Barcelona
Eva Carasol, Studio GISTO
Aljoša Marković