An invitation to listen

Massimo Bartolini and Luca Cerizza, sound sculptures for the Italian Pavilion
by Mariachiara Marzari
padiglione italia

Exhibited works and a rich public program for a collective project of meeting and listening, relationship and sound. Gavin and Yuri Bryars, Caterina Barbieri, and Kali Malone are the musicians involved in the project.

In his practice, Massimo Bartolini uses languages and materials – from small sketch-works assembled in the studio to complex sound sculptures, photographs, videos and performances – in unconventional ways. With an attitude of extreme openness, he has oriented his practice towards an ongoing discovery and investigation of the language of art, incessantly searching for the most suitable material to give shape to a need for expression and narrative possibility. Bartolini considers making and enjoying art a journey of knowledge of oneself, of one’s relationship with the world, and of the possibility of relating to others, and this becomes absolute in Due qui / To Hear, the theme and title of the Italian Pavilion at the 60th Art Biennale, curated by Luca Cerizza, and promoted by the General Directorate for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture.

My Fourth Homage: to Carmine Carbone, 2003. Stampa su dibond, 126×262 cm. Edizione di tre esemplari. Collezione Giuseppe Iannaccone Milano; Collezione Museo del Novecento, Milano. Foto Ela Bialkowska.

Music and listening are the subject of the exhibition, which becomes a visual, tactile and sound game in which one can “lose oneself” and “find oneself” in space and time. The ability to listen, therefore, as a tool for self-knowledge, as well as for attention to others, which characterises the work of Gavin Bryars, one of the most important figures in the experimental music of the last fifty years, and of Caterina Barbieri and Kali Malone, who share an interest in the immersive, meditative, even spiritual, properties of sound.

Featured photo: © Matteo de Mayda