LABS Contemporary Art Spaces unfolds Giulia Marchi’s traversal research through a series of significative works. Giulia Marchi’s artistic education had a strong literary imprint which has led her to a mode of expression that often seems like a narration, even when the chosen form – photography, but not only – does not make the reading so immediate, but refers to subsequent combinations, codes that invite interpretation before they can be deciphered.
The title The Nature of Logical Space takes up the title of one of the series of works on display in the exhibition and is a reference to the work of the Austrian philosopher and architect Ludwig Wittgenstein; his proposition is as follows, explaining the intent of the artist’s research: “Spatial and logical place agree in both being the possibility of an existence.”
For Wittgenstein, philosophical work, often in the same way as design in the architectural sense, is a work about oneself and one’s own point of view. This a concept that deeply interests Giulia Marchi and which she explores in this series, consisting of a collection of photographs and marble sculptures.
There are four marble slabs from the L’artefice series, on which the Virgilian hexameter Ibant obscuri sola sub nocte per umbram is engraved, a line chosen and proposed by the artist in Jorge Luis Borges’s incorrect version: Ibant obscuri sola sub nocte for umbras. An intentional mistake by the Argentine poet who loved errors so much that he considered them proof of truth and, certainly, proof of humanity. A fifth, larger slab bears the inscription Null, zero in German, the language of the philosopher who provided the inspiration for the entire project.
Additional space in the exhibition is dedicated to labyrinths and their philosophical value: in Borges and his garden-maze built on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, the labyrinth of Knossos on the island of Crete and, finally, the Dunure Labyrinth in Scotland. This is a reflection on the concept of limits through error, human weakness, bewilderment, doubt and the inability to solve an enigma is what characterises the works on display. Boundary, error, doubt – perhaps the most hidden, most fearsome but also the most fascinating meaning of existence.
Giulia Marchi. La natura dello spazio logico, curated byAngela Madesani, Labs Contemporary Art, Bologna, Italy, 24.10 – 19.12.2020
images: (cover 1-3-4) LabsGallery, GiuliaMarchi, photo: Carlo Favero (2) Giulia Marchi, «Tutto procede con un tempo fortissimo», 2019 (5) Giulia Marchi, «La natura dello spazio logico», 2020
