Dreamland is where the distance between epochs fades away
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- Sediments, Sentiments (Figures of Speech), 2007, mixed media and live performance, 762 x 594 x 671 cm; performed daily by opera singers: Angela Alesci, Mariachiara Cavinato, Mariacristina Ciampi, Serena Erba, Stella Gua, Aikaterini Katsou, Francesca Lughi, Tiziana Scaciga della Silva, Valentina Zampieri (soprano); Lea Airoldi, Elisa Pittau, Elena Serra (mezzosoprano); Jaime Canto Navarro, Ivan Defabiani (tenor) directed by Loris Peverada, Mario Valsecchi; special thanks to Milano Civica Scuola di Musica; Courtesy Franco Soffiantino Contemporary Art Productions.
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- Roman marble group of Orpheus and the animals, late 3rd – early 4th century AD. Height: 51cm Width: 41cm Depth: 28cm. Seen at Rupert Wace Ancient Art Limited.
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- Sediments, Sentiments (Figures of Speech), 2007, mixed media and live performance, 762 x 594 x 671 cm; performed daily by opera singers: Angela Alesci, Mariachiara Cavinato, Mariacristina Ciampi, Serena Erba, Stella Gua, Aikaterini Katsou, Francesca Lughi, Tiziana Scaciga della Silva, Valentina Zampieri (soprano); Lea Airoldi, Elisa Pittau, Elena Serra (mezzosoprano); Jaime Canto Navarro, Ivan Defabiani (tenor) directed by Loris Peverada, Mario Valsecchi; special thanks to Milano Civica Scuola di Musica; Courtesy Franco Soffiantino Contemporary Art Productions.
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- Roman marble group of Orpheus and the animals, late 3rd – early 4th century AD. Height: 51cm Width: 41cm Depth: 28cm. Seen at Rupert Wace Ancient Art Limited.
When we saw this marble group of Orpheus and the animals last week at TEFAF 2014 sold for a very large amount of money we immediately thought that the anonymous lucky collector had done an extraordinary purchase. But since that moment a bell has been ringing in our mind. Now we know why.
Orpheus is set high up on a rock on which animals are distributed. At his left foot a rabbit emerges from a burrow, while further down the rock are a series of sheep and cows… “set into recesses”, as reported by the description provided by the gallery. Then the click: last November, with Allora&Calzadilla solo project at Palazzo Cusani in Milan.
The scale of the two pieces is different, but the “rock” and “recesses” are definitely the trait d’union. Inside the gigantic foam and plaster iceberg six opera singers were performing phrases borrowed from significant speeches given during the twentieth century by politicians such as Martin Luther King, Nikita Khrushchev, the Dalai Lama, or Saddam Hussein. More than 2300 years before Orpheus, the ancestor of all these shepherds, was silently representing a same kind of dreamlike illusion.
July 18, 2015
