FRAGMENTS

Operativa arte contemporanea is glad to present Fragments, a site specific project conceived by Edoardo Dionea Cicconi in the city of Palermo. Inauguration on 11 July 2019 at Via Alloro 129.

Just as the blinding yellow light of the Palermitan summer turns dusk, the main door closes behind you while down the stairs and into the entrance hall, a mist creeps forth. Following it leads us to an entrance door on the 1st floor, beyond which objects can no longer be distinguished from dense waves of fog. All turns dark, and the sense of orientation wavers in the gleam of intermittent strobelights.

Kaos.

The project of Edoardo Dionea Cicconi extends across the scale of the location harbouring it, engulfing the visitor in a synaesthetic dimension surrounded by the outside reality, pursuing the effects of distortions and alterations of perception.

Just as the interior flux of our thoughts, unaware of the chronological bonds imposed by the dials of time as well as the rhythm of the universe and celestial matter, diluting and relativising itself, Fragments introduces a reflection upon the suspension of thought and linear perception.

Ecstasy.

Access to the installation requires somewhat of a compromise with the limited accessibility of the location, forcing us to interact with the unfathomable as we make our way through darkness. The surroundings of the hall are not clear, our steps become uncertain while our vision is fragmenting. Short of any spatial reference, a rope guides us to the main hall of the exhibition, while our sense of hearing is invaded by the echoes of obscure noise, namely electromagnetic vibrations from outer space recorded by NASA.

As detail, stemming from the french de-tailler, implies a perception of its form in strict relation to what it is isolated from, the fragment lacks the aspects of dependency and connection that would have allowed the tracing of its origins. By imposing itself as an interruption of ordered logical progression, the fragment is chaos elevated in power, or a root-like ramification of novel directions in sense, space and memory.

Time

From the ring suspended in the central hall, tension strings extend towards the walls where narrow glass tiles, fragments, make up apparent non-decipherable compositions, while physical sensation rests on uncertain limits that are inherent to the reflection on running time developed by the artist.

Along the walls, narrow glass tiles are configured as projections of the temporal stratification of vision, reassembled in the abstract. Their loss of recognition is reflected in the disorder of space and time permeating the exhibition, escaping linear comprehension just as the entire exhibition space evades the typical terms of recognition. As the hall is not illuminated, the comprehension of the displayed work requires us to interact with it by using a flashlight, preferably by using a smartphone. This creates an interplay of shadows and light across the surfaces of the frames in display.

Culmination.

The transparency of glass as well as the bending of refracted mirroring is the temporal layering of parts belonging to past or future, to the known and the unknown.

Ideally, the reflection proceeds pushing itself beyond the walls, through the entire city of Palermo. The interior is outside, and the exterior is within. The energy of the location, dense with ethnicities, cultures and memories, inspires the artist and reshuffles the cards placed on the table yet again through its ancestral reverberation.

Hic et nunc.

The circle generates cyclical stability: From the Ouroboros, the serpent of eternal returnbiting its own end, to Ensō of Zen painting, the ring of the central hall becomes the central pivot of reflection.

The images and the iconographical indexes used by the artist are fragments belonging to a non-personal collective memory. The images are iconographical extracts of an archetypical heritage of culture where the known becomes the conscious. The sole approach to recognising what lies within these images projected into the present is found in the past, and thus within ourselves.

Edoardo Dionea Cicconi elaborates upon the universal motif of cyclical time in a push towards the concept of eternity, sudden as the passage through a wormhole, in a key of relativism and distortion.

Text by: Giulia Pollicita
English translation: Christian Bianchi Strømme

A special thanks to:
The City of Palermo
Kevin C. Murphy and the NASA Archives
Alberto Stabile and the Mauceri Family

Operativa Arte Contemporanea 
Via del Consolato, 10 – 00186, Roma
www.operativa-arte.com | info@operativa-arte.com

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