Art exhibition at Castello Scaligero: “Memories of the Future”

Until October 2023, Castello Scaligero will be exhibiting sculptures and installations by two talented contemporary artists: Katja Loher and Dario Tironi.

This contemporary art exhibition in Malcesine is an exploration of the environment and the subject of sustainability through incredible sculptures and installations.

As the curator of the show, historian and art critic Marina Pizziolo, explains, the works of Loher and Tironi are “perfect poetic machines” which speak to the heart and the soul, encouraging change and positive behaviours for future generations.

The title “Memories of the Future” was chosen to stimulate the idea and importance of building a bridge between the past and the future.

The art exhibition at Castello Scaligero, staged in collaboration with the Kromya Art Gallery, is an initiative promoted by Malcesine council, demonstrating its commitment to culture and art.

The works of Loher and Tironi invite reflection on the future of our planet and the need to adopt responsible behaviours to protect the environment through an experience that has an impact yet which is also poetic, involving our senses.

In the Labia Hall inside Malcesine’s Castello Scaligero you can immerse yourself in the works of Katja Loher, a Swiss artists whose installations (video-planets) tell the story of the beauty of an infinitely small underwater world through the bodies of performers who dance on enlarged microscope slides, reproducing the fluctuations of plankton.

A fascinating microcosm which today is threatened more than ever by human beings and the impact our actions have on nature.

In the outdoor areas of Castello Scaligero you can view the nine sculptures by Dario Tironi, a Bergamo-based artist whose work is focussed on environmental issues linked to the evolution of man. The future is shaped by our present.

Tironi creates the majority of his works from recovered materials, plastics and old items of technology that are so beloved by people who produce them compulsively, leading to a huge quantity of waste.

His works have a big visual impact, stimulating dialogue between art and science, emotion and reason.

The assemblies which he creates assume many profound forms and meanings, including a representation of the classic human sculpture, yearning for the salvation of man through art.

The exhibition “Memories of the Future” is an art space in Malcesine where visitors need to stop, to reflect on the role of humanity and to adopt responsible lifestyles and behaviours which help to protect the environment we inhabit and which will be inhabited by future generations.

PRICES

• Adults € 6,00
• Concessions (over 65s, teenagers aged 14-18) € 5,00
• Children (aged 6-13) € 3,00
• Under 5s Free of charge

OPENING TIMES

• from 1 April 2023 to 30 April 2023, 09:30-18:30
• from 1 May 2023 to 1 October 2023, 09:30-19:30
• from 2 October 2023 to 2 November 2023, 09:30-18:30
• On Fridays and Saturdays from June to September the exhibition will remain open until 22:00. (Last admission at 21:30)

Katja Loher

Transparent Threshold 2023 - Immersive installation

Through a multi-sensory experience, the installation aims to reveal the splendour and complexity of marine life forms invisible to the human eye. The work invites us to experience a journey into a threatened underwater world, to discover the beauty and fundamental importance of plankton. This slowly drifting galaxy of animal and plant micro-organisms sustains ocean ecosystems, acting as the base of the food chain and producing a quantity of oxygen similar to that of all the world’s forests.

The installation consists of seven “planets” on which different videos are projected. The videos are made by superimposing the dance of performers filmed from above on microscopic images of plankton, provided by scientists working alongside the artist. Below the planets, the projection of a video on the ground casts our eyes into a body of water, the edges of which we can look over to discover the life pulsating within. The collective and rhythmic movement of the plankton is recreated by the dance of the performers, who take on the appearance of infinitely small creatures. The installation is accompanied by the music of Colombian composer JP Beltran.

Also on display is a video-sculpture made of hand-blown glass: an air bubble rising to the surface contains a video where performers dance, mimicking once again the fluctuations of plankton. The shape of the sculpture plays with the idea of being able to stop time, so that the bubble does not burst and can continue to protect the life taking place inside it.

Dario Tironi

Contaminated Bather 2020- Plastic waste and epoxy resin

Water is the main component of the human body, a container that can only exist and take shape through water. In a body that appears to be made of water are enclosed plastic objects, the same ones that float on our seas. Water is mobile, moving cyclically, even passing through living beings and physically blending the entire biosphere into a single organism. To contaminate water is to contaminate ourselves.

Untitled 2021 - trolley, various materials and paint

Our race for consumption is never-ending. Waste accumulates around us, changing the face of our planet. Inside the shopping trolley grows the skyline of a disturbing city.

The dream catcher 2019 - steel structure, cables and electrical devices

The title refers to the “dreamcatchers” that in the Indigenous cultures of North America were hung to watch over sleeping children. Reinterpreted in the present, this element reminds us of our vulnerable position as compulsive and irresponsible consumers, our regression to an infantile stage in the desire to own the latest technological devices, always updated and therefore immediately outdated.

The ancient plastic society 2014 - Steel, bumpers and paint

Fanta-archaeological finds from a society that it is destined to disappear: the plastic society. Two enormous masks made from car bumpers speak of a civilisation suffocated by its own waste. In a process of anthropogenesis, waste replaces us, bulimic and irresponsible consumers.

Relics 2023 - steel, various materials, paint

“Relics” is a series of sculptures made from diverse types of industrial waste, car parts, household appliances and other elements, assembled to make a single encompassing form. A chaotic and unpredictable mass in transformation. The title includes the double meaning of relic: the relic of the ideology that believes in consumerism as the only development model and the relic of a reality that is recent but already past, as it is made up of waste.

Untitled - Things 2023 - steel, various materials, paint

Two figures recalling classical statuary, composed of a 3D mosaic of waste. Each piece describes a product of our activity: “techno-fossils”, remnants of programmed obsolescence, newly produced but already out of fashion, in an unstoppable cycle of production, trade and consumption. We can throw it out of our home, but waste does not cease to exist and in the composed beauty of these two figures it becomes visible again for exhibition in a museum space: the place where we contemplate the products of our culture.

Soft Isolation 2019 - smartphone covers, paint

The cover lends individuality to an object that has almost become an extension of ourselves. It protects our phone while declaring the uniqueness of our body, reduced to an anonymous outline seeing that we all possess and desire the same things.