Andrea Galvani: Epílogo
September 18 – October 31, 2015
Marso Galería Arte Contemporáneo
Berlín 37, Col. Juárez 06600, México City

 

“To contemplate an empty sky until it gets lit with stars, then ask the imagination to seek other realms of emptiness.” — Etel Adnan, from Seasons

Andrea Galvani’s The End is a trilogy of cross-disciplinary exhibitions. A complex project comprised of photography, installation, drawing, objects, video, audio, and performance, The End is simultaneously a singular whole and its individual, autonomous parts.

Opening September 18th at Marso Galería in Mexico City, Epílogo is third in the sequence, completing The End trilogy. Succeeding the project’s inauguration at Revolver Galería in Lima, Peru (April 22 – June 4, 2015) and its continuation at Art in General in New York (May 16 – June 27, 2015), the forthcoming exhibit introduces new works, including three site-specific installations.

 

Inverting traditional exhibition logic, Epílogo represents an extended chronology of The End—from its conceptual origins to the inception of a new stage in the project’s evolution. This show will present a comprehensive compilation of Galvani’s research, allowing viewers access to the theoretical morphology that governs The End. In addition, the artist will unveil The End [Action #9], broadening the vision of The End [Action #1], a multichannel video installation originally presented in New York. Epílogo is thus the coalescence of form and expansion of scope, a new dimension of being in a continuum of becoming.

Constituted by seven synchronized videos portraying looped footage of the sun ascending above an oceanic horizon, The End [Action #1] documents a collective action: local cameramen in five different countries along the eastern coastline of Central America filmed the sunrise simultaneously on the anniversary of Galileo’s death. Conceived as an homage to the vanguard astronomer’s heliocentric model of our solar system, the videos—projected upon an architectural field of walls and platforms—are a cinematic monument to the source of visible light on earth. The installation self-illuminates as in nature: incandescent, the source of light is the sun itself. At specific times during the exhibition, the artist collaborated with vocalists, transforming the installation into an immersive theater of light and sound. Though complete in silence, Action #1 is texturized with modulation. Live sounds reminiscent of vocal tuning exercises echo the frequency of intensifying sunlight: Action #1 becomes a soundscape, an experiential orchestra of audio-visual stimuli. Focusing on one unique point in the universe and multiplying the singularity of one’s vantage, Galvani produced a meticulous scan of our planet’s movement around the sun—a visual examination of space that eclipses geometric geology. Measured acoustically, space is articulated outside of its physical scope.

Recalibrating our focus to the night sky, The End [Action #9] heightens the dimensionality of spacetime. Engendered by an action produced in over 100 locations around the world, Action #9 is a celestial kaleidoscope—nuances in technologies, geographic perspectives, and atmospheric interferences create a prismatic view of the cosmos. In an attempt to quantify the unquantifiable, Galvani constructs an architecture of impossibility. Whereas The End [Action #1] is the expansion of perspective, Action #9 reveals its limitations in a constellation of plurality. Though light is the source of visibility, there remains a universe of invisibility within light itself—frequencies operating on senses we have not yet evolved. Distance and obscurity create boundaries to our perceived awareness. If Action #1 exalts heliocentricity and our privileged position in this model, Action #9 reveals our state of periphery.