SPE - PERFORMANCE AND EXHIBITION SPACE 

15 SEPTEMBER-23 DECEMBER 2018

Gli Impresari
Il lanternista  (The Magic Lantern Man)

Winning Project Of Death and Dying

Gli Impresari  Il Lanternista, 2018. Courtesy the artists.

Gli Impresari (Edoardo Aruta, Marco Di Giuseppe and Rosario Sorbello) is an artistic collective researching those forms of artistic production resulting from intellectual speculation and technical innovations, which have driven and defined the development of our visual culture throughout the modern age. 

The project “Il lanternista” (“The Magic Lantern Man”) concerns a device that is commonly considered to be the precursor of cinema, in that it was one of the first instruments that enabled the projection of moving images. The magic lantern consisted of a closed box in which a light source (initially a candle, later a lamp) projected the light through a hole over which was attached a lens. The projections were images painted or etched on glass. The magic lantern was a device that required a particular performative ability on the part of the operator, a mixture of technical, artistic, storytelling and oratory skills.

An invitation to create a series of painted slides, aimed at a large selection of international artists, with the iconographic subject of “The Triumph of Death”, a detached fresco preserved in the Regional Gallery of Palazzo Abatellis in Palermo, is the pretext for a critical reflection on this theme, through a dialogue with an aesthetic and a cultural vision of the past. At the same time, it becomes the starting point for the creation of an installation that consists of a choral performance involving the jazz drummer Francesco Cusa for the opening day.

The performance on opening day is carried out thanks to works by: Giuseppe Abate, Carlos Amorales, Paola Angelini, Nico Angiuli, Franco Ariaudo, Saverio Bonato, Thomas Braida, Paolo Buggiani, Helen Cammock, Lia Cecchin, Manuele Cerutti, Leone Contini, Teresa Cos, Gruppo Etcetera, Cleo Fariselli, Roberto Fassone, Matteo Fato, Anna Franceschini, Valentina Furian, Martino Genchi, Marco Gobbi, Daniele Alef Grillo, Andrea Grotto, Federico Lupo, Francesco Maluta, Elena Mazzi, Cristiano Menchini, Alessandra Messali, Ryts Monet, Ignazio Mortellaro, Antoni Muntadas, Valerio Nicolai, Cesare Pietroiusti, Thomas Nadal Poletto, Luigi Presicce, Maria Domenica Rapicavoli, Nuvola Ravera, Mariateresa Sartori, Davide Sebastian, Mirko Smerdel, Giulio Squillacciotti, Serena Vestrucci, Luca Vitone, Špela Volčič.

Gli Impresari, Il lanternista