Exhibition
Luca Campestri - Black Noise - curated by Margherita Martini
Oct. 12th – 19th, 9pm 2023
In “Black Noise” Luca Campestri explores the interstitial space where accumulation and erosion of memories converge, starting a process of sensory disintegration that makes them resurface in an altered form. In physics, Black Noise describes a noise whose sound spectrum has a mostly zero intensity level across all frequencies, with the exception of occasional peaks. Black Noise is therefore the noise of silence, but it is also the noise of the sudden loss of silence itself. Hanging on the walls of Material are works from the series Abyss. Images of plunging (or resurfacing?) bodies are printed on a thermochromic black fabric, emerging from obscurity when touched by the warmth of the viewer's skin. Here, Black Noise is an abrupt dissolution of visual silence, a tactile amnesia. A book crafted from the same fabric mirrors the layered nature of memories. Here again, the contact with the pages unveils the image within before it disappears beneath a new layer of darkness. To each person who browses through it, the book returns a personal and intimate dimension of the memory.
Set up by the window and only visible from the outside, a monitor displays the negative photo of a swallow skimming across the water, an image connected to a memory of the artist. Yet, it's not the memory itself that interests Campestri but the quest to evoke it through sensory translation. In fact, the screen shows the image being read by a software that assigns to each pixel an acoustic pitch, transforming it into a sound track. The result is a spectrogram emitting a looping mechanical chirp, the strident noise of the visual fragmentation of the swallow. “Black Noise” explores the return of memories. The past, a peak of white within the black, reappears in the present in view of a future continuity that attempts to give it meaning. Memories burst forth, offering an alternative perspective in which the visual, auditory and tactile dimensions coexist in a mediation that is both disintegration and re-elaboration. Campestri's memories nostalgically yearn for their original form but repeatedly falter in their attempt to adhere to it. Curated by Margherita Martini
Luca Campestri (Florence, 1999) is an Italo-German artist based in Bologna, Italy, where he honed his skills by attending courses in Decorative Arts and Environment as well as Visual Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts. His research spans various mediums, namely video, photographic and sound installations, with a central focus on the concept of the specter as a partial being: an entity that no longer exists or is yet to exist, but whose effects persist or precede their enactment. Consequently, Campestri's works are often configured as the imprint left by a memory that is disintegrating and stage affective places and dynamics of both mnemonic and image disintegration.
Margherita Martini is an independent curator based in Zurich, Switzerland. In parallel with her work as art historian within a local gallery, she is currently pursuing a Master of Advanced Studies (MAS) in Curating at the Zurich University of Arts (ZHdK). Her curatorial research is rooted in the exploration of liminal spaces– those cracks where identity displacements, remnants of history, and the subtle dynamics of emotional transformation are deposited.
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| Address | Klingenstrasse 23, 8005 Zürich, Switzerland |
