Reflections
2017 Chronos, Palazzo Barbò, Torre Pallavicina (Bergamo)
2015 Reflections, ex Church of San Cristoforo, Mantua, 2015
2012 Behind the Curtains, The Flat - Massimo Carasi, Milan (exposed a part)
2010 Lo Spazio del Sacro, Palazzo Santa Margherita, Galleria Civica, Modena
Installation commissioned by the Galleria Civica of Modena (Italy) on the occasion of the international exhibition Lo Spazio del Sacro, curated by Marco Pierini and to which were invited the following artists:
Adel Abdessemed, Giovanni Anselmo, Kader Attia, Paolo Cavinato, Chen Zhen, Vittorio Corsini, Josep Ginestar, Anish Kapoor, Richard Long, Roberto Paci Dalò, Jaume Plensa, Wael Shawky.
lacquered wood, card, earth, acrylic, plexiglas, PVC
variable dimensions
The installation, created especially for the exhibition, is based on the principle of two mirroring worlds, apparently identical, which appear to reflect each other along an axis, an imaginary reflective surface which crosses and separates the entire length of the exhibition space in ideal terms. On this side a number of geometrical objects, some reminiscent of objects of everyday use – doors, chairs, bed heads, chests – are lined up in an orderly succession, laid out as if following a mysterious yet unquestionable universal law. They are abstract elements, bereft of any function, as if belonging more to the world of ideas, the upshot of the combination of complex geometries which only by accident, or statistical data, take on the recognisable forms of common objects. Despite their concreteness, they seem soulless, distant from man, representative of a purely mental time and space: absolute and unchangeable. As well as the sequence of abstract elements, their doubles are shown as apparently reflected images, found on the other side of the ideal mirror in the space.
The visitor is offered the experience of stepping over that axis of symmetry, thus becoming the actor and key to the very functioning of the staging of the work. He passes the threshold between the two symmetrical worlds, yet his image is not reflected; he is excluded from the reflection and becomes a mere bodiless presence, the unveiler of the illusive trap of perspective. It is in this passage that the symmetry reveals its betrayal, the phase displacement between the two halves. While one is the expression of the values of integrity, purity, immutability, eternity and certainty (the white, shining, perfect objects), the other is a trace of what is to come, of transformation and inexorable dissolution (the same objects worn down, faded, shoddy, left at the mercy of passing time). The threshold, the limit between these two realties thus becomes the experience of the double and the imperfect reflection of the world of ideas; but also an experience of the ambiguity between the precarious and the notion of the infinite on one hand, and the ambivalence inherent in the thought of man and his existence on the other.
Reflections is extremely representative of the poetics of Paolo Cavinato, a young artist from Mantua who, after completing his studies and undertaking his first important works in set design, settled definitively on artistic research, which he develops largely through his sculptural works, drawings and installations, some of which accompanied by sound. His works are based on a sense of rigour, symmetry meant as a value of beauty and harmony and the evolution of pure form as an ordering and generating principle underpinning the rhythms of nature and the cosmos. In his complex geometric works focusing on the relationship between the full and the empty, the modulated and the serial, the particular and the infinite, there is a notable influence of Oriental cultures.
Silvia Ferrari
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