Pizziolo, M 2023, Memorie dal futuro. Katja Loher e Dario Tironi, enhanced Challenge, EdiXion, Milan.
An exhibition to reflect on the future we want. The evocative setting of the Scaligero Castle in Malcesine, a fascinating medieval village on Lake Garda, welcomes the sculptures and installations of Katja Loher and Dario Tironi, united by research oriented towards environmental themes. The exhibition was conceived and curated by Marina Pizziolo. This exhibition project dialogues with other environmental research present in the EdiXion catalogue, confirming the publisher’s commitment to themes of sustainability and artistic innovation.
The works of the two artists are powerful “Memories from the Future”. A future that scientists regard with apprehension, but which we can modify with our choices and our behaviour, transforming scientific alarm into a disproved omen. If science speaks to reason, art communicates through the power of its suggestions. “This is why the works of Katja Loher and Dario Tironi are perfect poetic machines, generators of stories that know how to speak to the most innocent part of us”.
The exhibition is structured in two distinct parts. The Sala Labia of the Scaligero Castle houses an immersive installation created by Katja Loher, whilst in the external spaces of the Castle and in the Casermetta veneziana nine large sculptures by Dario Tironi are placed.
The installation by Katja Loher (Zurich, 1979) aims to reveal, through a multisensory experience, the splendour and complexity of marine life forms invisible to our eyes. The work offers the experience of a journey into a threatened underwater world, discovering the beauty and fundamental importance of plankton. The installation consists of seven “planets” onto which as many videos are projected. The videos are created by overlaying the dance of performers filmed from above with microscopic images of plankton, provided by scientists who collaborate with the artist. Beneath the planets, the projection of a video on the ground makes our eyes sink into a mirror of water, to whose shores we can approach to discover the life that pulses within it. The collective and rhythmic movement of plankton is recreated by the dance of performers, who take on the appearance of infinitely small creatures. The installation is completed by a soundtrack by Colombian composer JP Beltran.
After the performances by Francine Hoenner and Irene Guglielmelli during the exhibition opening, the castle hosted the performance of Swiss singer La Lupa, also dedicated to Katja Loher’s installation.
Dario Tironi’s sculptures (Bergamo, 1980) are fantasy-archaeological finds of a society destined to disappear: the plastic society”, writes Marina Pizziolo. “The memory of the future is the soul of Tironi’s sculptures. His figures arrive from the aftermath that will fatally follow our compulsive accumulation of objects. In a process of anthropogenesis our waste aggregates until it assumes organic forms, destined to take our place. Melancholic robots tell of a catastrophe that has been, rising like herms as a warning of a salvation still possible. Dario Tironi expresses his faith in man, through figures and forms that manage to sublimate the havoc produced by the enormous mass of our waste, arriving at a new aesthetic. The plastic objects that pollute our seas colour the body of the contaminated Bagnante, without succeeding in ruining her beauty, protected by the classicism of her forms. A shopping trolley full of waste objects invents and elevates a Gothic architecture. It is culture and love of beauty that is our last bastion”.
Enhanced content of the book. Explore the multimedia materials embedded:
– p. 2: The curator introduces the exhibition
– p. 8: Dario Tironi during installation
– p. 16: Katja Loher during installation
– p. 29: Katja Loher’s video installation in the Sala Labia
– p. 35: Detail of Katja Loher’s video installation
– p. 37: Detail of Katja Loher’s video installation
– p. 39: Detail of Katja Loher’s video installation
– p. 41: Performance by Francine Hoenner
– p. 43: Dario Tironi’s works at Malcesine Castle
– p. 51: Dario Tironi’s works at Malcesine Castle
– p. 63: Katja Loher’s underwater world
– p. 65: Dario Tironi at work in his studio
