Open Daily 9:30–6:00, Monday Until 8:00
LOG (R-D-A) // Daniele D’Acquisto
Opening September 14, 2023, 6:00 p.m.-11:00 p.m.
Via Cervino 16 – 10155 Turin
The show will be visible till October 20, 2023
Extract from the curated text by Michele Bramante
The world is defined in a continuous space, which for D’Acquisto is the essential material for sculpture […]. When a fragment of reality is transformed into pure volume it loses all connection with its ordinary existence […] To discover unsuspected affinities we should look at Cézanne’s still lifes, at his realism articulated through the solid (but not abstract) forms of the cylinder, of the sphere and the cone, and his proverbial apples, which interested him less as a subject than as a figurative pretext to give substance to volume through color. The trunk that D’Acquisto places among the elements of an installation is precisely a sculptural cylinder, without implications of another order. […]
The dense space is modeled around things as if it were taking their mould, but continues without interruption between the inside and outside of their perimeter, uniting and fusing the bodies. The apparent void that separates them is an integral part of the sculptural whole. D’Acquisto’s “Strings” are the materialization, in the form of thick and flexible ribbons, of continuity in (and of) space. […]
If common objects end their previous life by entering the domain of sculpture, they find their rebirth here. Everything concerning the new existence is essentially spatial and acts retroactively on the entire memory of objects. The chronology of their movements, of the physical interactions with other masses, of the internal transformations and of the spatial restructuring of the environments in which they act, converges in the conditions reached in the current state. […] The formal state that is observed is the cast of the actions imprinted by time in continuous readjustment. […]
The LOG (R-D-A) exhibition updates the state of Daniele D’Acquisto’s works to the present and, at the same time, summarizes his particular concept of sculpture extended to the cumulative experience of research on forms. The term “log” comes from computer language. Corresponds to a log of events that occur during the use of an electronic device. The file therefore serves to collect operational memory. By analogy, the exhibition and the specific way in which the works appear – which D’Acquisto calls display (D), borrowing it again from information technology – unite and fix in a specific representation the spatial dynamics memorized up to that moment by the objects.
From a formal point of view, however, not all objects are able to communicate their intrinsic unity with past events. Works of art, in particular those expressed by traditional techniques such as painting and sculpture, are consigned, once completed, to a temporally isolated moment, concentrated in the instant in which they ideally manifest their complete meaning in the eyes of the observer. […] In LOG (R-D-A), the installations that occupy the main nucleus of the exhibition are created by assembling the crates that serve to preserve the works in the periods of time in which they are not exhibited, during movements from one location to another or in Gallery storage. The volume of the crates is therefore closely connected on the one hand with the spatial memory of what they must contain, and on the other with the environments in which they are moved and placed from time to time. Their function is essentially united, therefore, not only to the form they possess, what makes them sculpture (the object is manufactured in a certain way to effectively fulfill its purpose), but also to the physical and temporal dimensions of the work inside themselves, and in the Gallery. Their chronological value is immediately evident in the unity between form and function.
Posted to the crates are photos of the works, such as when it is necessary to recognize their contents once they arrive at their destination after a transfer, or to easily identify them when they are crammed into a warehouse. Assembled in the installations, the parallelepipeds continue Daniele D’acquisto’s research (R) on the plasticity of common objects. Seen in their mnemonic sediment, they introduce the accumulated time into the form. The cataloging through photos and the relationship with the life of the works adds that of archiving to the primary function of the containers (A).
[…] The investigation into the morphology of the sculpture absorbs the surrounding space of the Gallery. Here crates and works are contained, both during the exhibition and when objects are returned for use. The Gallery therefore also accesses all phases: first as an orderly deposit ((A)archiving), then being plastically organized together with the objects exhibited there ((R)isearch), finally as an exhibition scene ((D)display). Everything simultaneously has different ways of existing, which are interchangeable and superimposable. Through space runs a continuous range of action that unites and generates the different moments from one another. Said in symbols, the endless series of interchangeable possibilities would sound like RDA, DAR, RAD, ADR, ARD, DRA, DRRA, RADR, RRAAD, RRADDA, DARRAD, etc… in which work-object, crates-installation and exhibition space exchange the parts of (R)isearch, (D)display and (A)archive continuously. The anniversaries of this series therefore give the title to the other photographs found on the walls of the Gallery. […] The metal bands that cut the images symbolize the adhesive tape that actually holds the photographs to the containers, but they also perform the same task as the strings that measure and cross the space, devouring objects.
Even the void has a precise plastic sense. Everything is part of a single construction: the profile of the objects that defines the individual sculptural identities, the solids and voids created by their presence and absence, the past and present spatial relationships. Outside of the packaging, the works regain their formal unity. D’Acquisto distributes them in the rooms in a bare and discontinuous way, to highlight the fundamental role that architectural space takes on in a sculptural key.
Strings is a smaller-scale portion of a larger installation. The versatility and variable size of these ribbons is included in their concept, since the length can be extended or interrupted at will to appropriate a relative space, commensurate with the invasion of the place in which they flow. An end of the string is tied to the beams of the Gallery, dragging it into its formal dimension.
From a linguistic point of view, D’Acquisto’s audio tracks behave like the rhetorical figure of synesthesia: they materialize the sound in a visible and tangible block. The so-called “waveforms” which graphically record the amplitude of the audio signals are projected in three dimensions to become, once again, sculpture. The GoRe recording Ok Huston, We’ve had a problem here… (mono) extends the horizon and the spatial feeling to the cosmic confusion felt in orbit by the astronauts of the Apollo 13 spacecraft, forced to make a forced return to Earth after the Moon landing mission aborted due to oxygen tank failure.
The abstract silhouettes of the Regola cycle (E1, D1 and B1) are strips of space torn from the contours of a piece of furniture, the same one on which Strings’ ribbons slide and penetrate. The area around the small sideboard takes shape like a negative mold on the edges of the object, compacting into segments and geometric solids which in turn seek balance with the place in which they float.
