Presented by the Revolver gallery, Galvani's project explores the frontiers of the unknown and seems to illustrate a new cosmology.
The Italian artist Andrea Galvani has won the 7th Audemars Piguet Award for the production of a work of art at ARCOmadrid 2019. His project, presented by the Peruvian Revolver gallery, will be exhibited in the Audemars Piguet space at the Fair when it is held from 27 February to 3 March.
The jury, comprised of Javier Molins, art critic; Lucía Casani, director of La Casa Encendida; Pilar Lladó, collector; Eduardo Rivero, collector; Eloy Martínez de la Pera, art consultant at Audemars Piguet Iberia; Winka Angelrath, director of exhibitions at Audemars Piguet; Brian Lavio, general director of Audemars Piguet, and Carlos Urroz, director of ARCOmadrid, highlighted how well his entry reflected the spirit of the brand, which based on "Complexity and precision". The scientific basis of the award is combined with the powerful visual and conceptual experience of the Galvani piece, in addition to a performance that will activate the whole facility at certain times during the art fair.With this award, Andrea Galvani will have a prize worth 15,000 euros for the production of his site-specific project.
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Developed in collaboration with physicists and mathematicians at UNAM, NASA and the Imperial College of London, the project excavates into the frontiers of the unknown - a living memorial to the temporality of theories and attempts to transform the uncertain into the absolute. The title of the installation, Instruments for Inquiring into the Wind and the Shaking Earth, the name of the first seismoscope invented by visionary mathematician and scholar Zhang Heng (78 -139 CE). According to ancient Chinese records, in the year 138 his primordial device detected an earthquake 600 kilometers away. This work is both a proclamation of the power and failure of human knowledge - our desire to understand, to regulate what is abstract, to impose order and precision upon an unpredictable and complex world.
The installation is an incandescent landscape, a unified visual field conceived as an experiential environment - an act of discovery. Like a cloud, a constellation of white neon calculations suspended overhead occupies the transitional zone of architectural space. Mathematical equations precisely describe the symmetry of physical laws: from the undulating movement of waves, to the nature of time; the generation of a lighting storm, to the regulation of ocean tides; the rate at which the cosmos expands, and the possibility of life on other planets.Vocalists and performers transform the space into an immersive kinetic theater. Live voices produce a chorus that seems to emerge from a primitive instinct. Natural sounds and chants rise, articulating a transformation from state to state in a sonic ecosystem that is alive and active. Like a river that is never the same, bodies and sounds move through a cyclical choreography that advances and recedes. The installation expands, becomes a soundscape, an experimental orchestra of audio-visual stimuli. Collective rhythms and individual inflections move and pulse through space, texturizing it, interacting with architecture, the work, and the public.