Marco Bagnoli

Galleria Giorgio Persano, Turin
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For Marco Bagnoli the relationships between space and time, single and double, light and shadow are fundamental. All of these elements animate the artist’s remarkably complex artistic practice. Through the interweaving of symbols, the exhibition at the Galleria Persano evoked ideas of sacredness and inner purity.

In the corridor that led to the gallery’s central room, the artist installed two identical canvases, square in shape and hung obliquely from their corners. In the upper part of each canvas appeared an X—the letter that “defines the space-time relationship,” as Bagnoli observed in his series “Space X Time” of the early ’90s. In the lower part, the same consonant was written in Sanskrit, the most ancient language known to humankind.

The opening of the door that connected the corridor to the main exhibition space was narrowed and flanked by two columns—an attempt by the artist to simulate the entryway of the Temple of Apollo, which represents, for him, a place of inner spirituality and harmony. A pillar entirely covered with golden tiles (a metaphor for the life-giving sun) dominated the room; according to Bagnoli, it represents a hillside that rises from the island of Delos and is struck by the light. In this place, the divine succeeds in materializing for an instant.

Inside the room, a complex network of relations developed implicating silence and sound, light and shade. The opening on the left had been closed up with a mirror, behind which a flask emitted luminous beams and projected its shadow upon an urn placed in the middle of the half-closed door shutters that led into the final room.

The work, which refers to Siby’s Urn, emitted enigmatic and mysterious sounds that seemed to accompany the spectator into the third room, where, finally, a statue of Apollo embodied the presence of the divine. One had only to follow the secret calling of the oracle, the subtle game of light and shadow, of passages and closures, to overcome the world’s discord and attain a state of catharsis.




Tiziana Conti
Translation by Amanda Coulson