Until 7 October 2018
The outdoor spaces of Palazzo Ducale in Mantua come alive with luminous works by important Italian and international artists.
The creators invited to come to terms with the medieval and Renaissance facades of the Gonzaga residence are: Federica Marangoni, Donatella Schilirò, Nicola Evangelisti, Massimo Uberti, Edward Shuster + Claudia Moseley, Marco La Rosa, Davide Dall’Osso, Romano Mantovani Boccadoro, David Dimichele, Fardy Maes.
The show can be visited from the outside, taking the paths alongside the Castle, the Cavallerizza and the Portico della Rustica.
The Time Machine is a project by Federica Marangoni to reflect on the concept of time, a very ambitious undertaking for a figurative artist. Many philosophers have written on the subject, but to represent it through images and physical works is even more complex than trying to analyze it with words. Time is a thought connected with life itself, it flows with us and ends with us.
Three meters high, with a diameter of 1 meter, the work has a structure in gilded steel, with 6 yellow neon tubes (2 meters high) inserted in a PVC sheath. The transformer and timer are placed in the base.
The palpitation of light is like the heartbeat, which is life.
Death is forever and without time, years, hours, minutes are a human thought, related to existence, always calculated by man by means of “Time Machines” he has constructed and perfected, from sundials to modern watches, which we constantly check. Light is the fundamental material of this work, a rhythmical and mobile metaphor of the heart, the time machine of life. This golden hourglass is a contemporary work which with its palpitating light is transformed into a vital and ephemeral object, celebrating life itself.
Federica Marangoni
The work La Luce della Memoria by Federica Marangoni is a small library of books in glass. With their refined workmanship, they are all one of a kind pieces. The light that emerges from the surfaces with amber, gray or golden tones makes the objects magical in the dark.
The small neon lights and LEDs immersed in the glass make these symbols of culture and thought come alive.
The work is dedicated to Giulio Romano, the Renaissance genius, who had his own library precisely inside this castle.
The eternal value of History and the emotional value of Memory, two topoi of the work of the Venetian artist, take on the hardness of a diamond and the transparency of truth in this work. Beyond the pages of the books, it speaks of the Library of Babel of the great Jorge Luis Borges. In the era of information storage and the unstoppable media spectacle of a globalized culture, Federica Marangoni stands out for having been capable of finding, in the hardness and purity of glass combined with light, a functional medium for her message, and the loftiest metaphor of her poetry.
Viana Conti
