The Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art presents a large solo exhibition by Anri Sala (Tirana, 1974), an artist who had already participated in the group exhibition Faces in the Crowd at Castello di Rivoli in 2005.
Specifically designed for the spaces on the third floor of the Castello, this large exhibition project brings together some of the most significant filmic works created by the artist in recent years, including Ravel, Ravel (2013), Take Over (2017) and If and only if (2018). This exhibition offers the opportunity for the first presentation in a public museum of the artwork If and only if (2018), in which the renowned violinist Gérard Caussé is filmed by Anri Sala while he plays an Elegy by Igor Stravinsky with a viola on whose bow a snail crawls upward, forcing him to modify and slow down his playing time and the rhythm of the composition, creating a music in collaboration between human and non-human.
Since 2000, Anri Sala has created film and music installations, sculptures, photographs and drawings that investigate ruptures in history. The artist uses the architectural space to fold together visual, sound and tactile elements in order to generate new interpretations of history and new possibilities within an emancipatory vision of language and culture.
As components of an unusual orchestra, the three works will be projected in the galleries of the Castello by a complex technological mechanism created by the artist using augmented reality as a tool, able to offer visitors an immersive experience of high emotional and synaesthetic impact. According to the artist’s project, the projections will unfold along a special wall that crosses through all galleries of the space and the exhibition will take the form of a “parade,” with a flow of moving images and multiple narratives. Interested in intervals in the rhythm of music, images, experiences, Anri Sala with this exhibition reverses the emerging paradigm of passivity of the visitor who receives the illusion of reality by standing still, inviting him instead to move with the images in a corporeal way chasing them along the exhibition path. Finally, more than a presentation of three interwoven film works, it is a projection device that becomes a unique and gigantic sculpture in movement.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a bilingual scholarly catalog (English and Italian), published by Castello di Rivoli together with Skira Editore, Milan. The catalog will present new texts by the two curators, a collection of the widest selection of writings by the artist ever published, including numerous unpublished texts. The catalog will also include an in-depth section of end-matters, including a rich exhibition history, anthology of critical writigs and bibliography.
