Dante’s Cosmological Conception at Dimora Artica, Milan
“Progetto Italiano” (Italian Project) no.01 – Dante’s cosmological conception is the first of a series of group exhibitions, whose fundamental aim is the promotion and valorization of Italy’s cultural and artistic past and present. The shows are presented at various galleries in Italy and abroad. Every artist will confront themselves with their homeland’s present and its traditions.
The project’s first date puts in comparison artists with completely different poetics, each interacting with the ideal of cosmos, seen throughout Dante’s conception. The different elements on show represent the Earth, standing still at the center of the Universe. Each artist’s form of communication corresponds to a different element in the universe. The exhibition set-up presents itself as a sort of “artistic” microcosmos. All artwork is concentrated in restricted areas of the exhibition space, to stimulate a direct visual comparison.
The invited artists’ artwork is connected to Dante’s cosmological vision in different ways, through which analogies and contrasts emerge. Beside the referrals to a correspondence between cosmos and nature, different problematics emerge in relation to society and morality, between acceptance and rebellion. Whereas Dante suggests a moral vision which is equated to personal ascension, in human actions this vision is often turned into the logics of power – a power that arbitrarily discerns between good and evil, forgetful of human dignity, to the point of reiterating unmotivated acts of racism. The project is structured in order to suggest different considerations, among which: the contrast between religion and science; the formation of matter and thought; the idea of an existential cosmos; the possible existence of a moral conception in art practices; the existential void as a fall into hell; the perception of good and evil in the art world.
Dante’s cosmological conception was born after his studies of the Ptolemaic-Aristotelian conception, with an influence by Platonism and Neoplatonism – everything reinterpreted in a Christian view. The world, seen from a classical point of view, is based on the anthropomorphic conception of the cosmos as a living organism, with six different orientations: up and down, right and left, front and back. These orientations imply a moral meaning: up is good, and so are right and front; down, left and back are bad. In Dante’s vision, the Earth is a motionless sphere, suspended at the centre of the universe and divided into two hemispheres: the inhabited Northern Hemisphere, and the Southern Hemisphere, covered by water. The mountain of Purgatory is connected to Hell’s pit, and was created by land retracting when Lucifer fell from Heaven to the center of the globe. The earth that retracted to create the chasm of Hell moved towards the Northern Hemisphere and formed the mountain of Purgatory.
–Pietro Di Lecce
Paola Angelini, Erica Battello, Arianna Carossa, Lia Cecchin, Matteo Fato, Francesco Fossati, Franco Nardi, Luca Pozzi, Mario Scudeletti, Stefano Serusi e Špela Volčič. “Progetto Italiano” (Italian Project) no.01 – Dante’s cosmological conception, curated by Pietro Di Lecce. Dimora Artica, Milan through June 21, 2014
by Droste Effect
in Focus on Europe
Jun 3, 2014