(City of Art) Spatial reflections and curved space

As part of the 2022 edition of Arte Fiera, Kermes dedicated to modern and contemporary art in Bologna, Guglielmo Marconi Airport will host, from 11 May until 12 June 2022, the work of Nicola Evangelisti selected by curators Manuela Valentini and Olivia Spatola.

It’s “Curved Space-Time,” a light installation inspired by the thesis on a curved and dynamic universe in which the law of chaos applies. The work will be displayed inside the Marconi Business Lounge (on the first floor of the terminal building) and will be visible every day, from 5.00 to 21.00, even to those who have not left. On Saturday 14 May, in honor of Art White Night, the Marconi Business Lounge will be exceptionally open until midnight to allow the art public and passengers to view the installation.

Nicola Evangelisti’s work poetically represents Einstein’s principles of general relativity according to which, when energy and matter fill the universe, it distorts and radiates light after it bends. Thus, the angular dimensions of each observed object are modified and the images are split and intertwined to create stunning scenarios.
With this installation, Evangelisti attempted to imagine the potential perspectives opened by Einstein’s imagination through an aesthetic capable of engaging the viewer in the very extension of the work; Indeed, in close proximity to it, thanks to a delicate optical phenomenon, an entire aerial drawing of light appears, which is impossible to determine at a specific point in space.

Evangelisti’s artistic career is characterized by the wise and personal use of light, as an expressive medium and as an object of spiritual, scientific, social and political speculation. “Curved Spacetime” is part of a new spatial business cycle focusing on the scientific topics of a cosmic system, called “Spatial Structures and Cosmological Hypotheses”, as they constitute visualizations and expressions of principles that can be formalized in mathematical terms. Through these works, the artist attempts to provide a personal definition of the concept of spatial structure understood as a spatio-space-time fabric in which there is a congruence of form, light and matter.

“Curved Space-Time” is an evocative and comprehensive work that comes into direct relationship with the viewer, thanks to the mirror surface. The mirror seems to admirably accompany the perpetual story of mutations and the illusory nature of the forms, subject to constant changes, in a semi-organic continuity that connects man with his nature.
According to Evangelisti, man is a part of a whole by the principle of interdependence in which the individual part corresponds to the whole on different scales of size.

In the work we find the artist’s hallmark of a branching cycle that corresponds to the generative principles that organize the chaotic forms found in nature and that inspire him.
Every natural form is created by turbulence because nothing is really constant: vortices, eruptions, and galaxies form, grow, and evolve until they merge and disappear into a whole.
The hard stone was also a river of lava, in which the ice was rain and water vapor. The lives of many creatures are grafted into the making and decoding of the matter that constitutes, in its entirety and its evolutionary continuity, the concept of immortality and immortality.

In Curved Space-Time, the mirror in which the self-image is reflected becomes the medium for communicating space and time to work, to be absorbed in it, and to introduce another dimension that does not match that of one’s own personal experience.
So the project aims to create an immersive space, where the architecture of the host and the work form a seamless and integrated continuity in which the viewer is an active part.

About Nicola Evangelisti
Nicola Evangelisti graduated in sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, and made his debut at the age of 25 with a solo show in Chicago called Cosmic Fragments. In 2000 he won the Guglielmo Marconi International Prize. In 2002, his Big Bang works became part of the Targetti Light Art Collection and were shown at the Chelsea Museum of Art in New York, at the Center for Contemporary Art at Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, at MAK in Vienna and at MUAR in Moscow.
In 2006 a new cycle of socio-political order began, represented by the installation of shells, bullets, spears and knives made with holographic techniques. The installation You Are Not Safe in Shells is on display at MACRO in Rome and is part of the permanent collection of the Galila’s POC Museum in Brussels. The installation Light Blade (2009) was shown in the courtyard of Villa Reale in Milan, becoming part of the Galleria d’Arte Moderna collection in Milan.
Since 2013, he has created a cycle of multimedia events in places of worship in collaboration with the musician of the same name, Nicola Evangelisti. Lux Inaccessibilis, in the monastery of the Basilica of San Domenico in Bologna, Solis binoculars for Bologna Design Week, the genus of Lucis inside the sanctuary of the Madonna di San Luca in Bologna.
In this period, two outstanding environmental works opened at the Mantua Biennale of Light in Palazzo Ducale, focusing on sacred geometry and recurring symbols in ancient religions.
In 2021, he presented his latest sacred-themed light installation, The Temple of Light, in the garden of the Grand Hotel Timeo in Taormina. In 2021 he had two solo exhibitions: at the Villa Contemporanea Gallery in Monza and at the Contemporary Cultural Center at Palazzo Tagliaferro in Andorra.

open time
From May 11 to June 12 2022
It will open on Wednesday, May 11 at 11.00
Visible every day from 5.00 to 21.00
Saturday 14.05.2022 Visible from 5.00 to 24.00 at Art White Night
Marconi Lounge – 1st Floor Passenger Building
Guglielmo Marconi Airport – Bologna