Codex atlanticus
Codex atlanticus is a series of works that began in Galicia, on the Atlantic coast of Spain (hence the name) and on which I am still working. These are very different works, photos, drawings, objects, installations that have as their subject the relationship between seeing and imagining.
In the case of luminous objects, for example, the idea is that the incandescent filaments of old light bulbs are graphic elements of writing — we face a text that we recognize as such, but lack the key to understanding it.
When Edison invented the light bulb that we used until a few years ago, Monet had not yet started painting his water lilies…
Sibirische Licht- und Wärmeverwaltung
(the Siberian administration of light and heat)
The idea for this cycle of works — not yet complete — was born during my journey to Siberia. To my great surprise, in Irkutsk I found the same heat as Roman summers. The tram tracks twisted in the sun, fresh melons rotted on the market stalls. On the promenade of the Angàra river, in the evening, I enjoyed the comfort of the fresh wind and asked myself: where has the cold gone?
On the hottest afternoons, my imagination looked for traces of the past winter’s frost and found them: in the pieces of string that sealed the window panes, in the custom of barricading the shop windows with crates of merchandise (so, entering a shop, you go through the warehouse first). Or, even in everyone’s anxiety to boil, pickle, salt, preserve, and jam every vegetable and fruit that the short season of abundance offers us, before the long months of darkness and the fear of not surviving creep in.
So, I began to understand that in the great heat is contained the memory of the frost and vice versa — it’s all about recognizing the signs. As always.
Perhaps I describe this experience in the form of luminous objects because for me that was a summer truly full of light (for which I still thank my colleagues from the Baikal Project, and in particular, Sara Focke-Levin).
