Now in its fifth edition, Against Sun and Dust presents an exhibition of the artist Cyprien Gaillard, comprising new and recent works on view at Villa Imperiale.
The endurance of the Villa is observed, as a monolithic body exposed for centuries to direct sunlight. Framing the area of San Bartolo Natural Park, the gaze expands to the recent history of the building, tourism and consumer boom that contributed to the local phenomenon known as Riviera club culture. The project is a new occasion for Gaillard to test the sense of occupation and transformation of natural space, the preservation of the architectural and geological stratification, and the lacerations left from the rise and fall of historical or contemporary utopias.
In the 16th century, architect and artist Girolamo Genga was commissioned by the Della Rovere family to build the extension of Villa Imperiale. Compared to the preexisting 15th century complex, it took on the features of an enigmatic summer villa, a fortress within the woods that almost paradoxically encloses mostly gardens and open spaces. A project of joyful living that Leonora Gonzaga dedicated to her husband Francesco Maria della Rovere, ”in compensation of the sun, dust, sleepless nights in battle” - that ”Pro sole pro pulvere...” of the courtyard epigraph that inspired the title Against Sun and Dust. But their utopian program was never experienced as originally intended because of the Duke’s untimely death. Leonora retired in mourning away from Pesaro, and the Villa remained unfinished.
In the 1990s, Italy experienced the height of cash circulation - the subject of much crime and corruption - as well as a boom in the production of ATM machines. Some companies responded to the customers’ needs, adding metal eyelids to prevent the reflection of sun’s rays on the monitor and to ensure privacy. In a twist of references, the design of this protective lid was inspired by the science fiction film Stargate (1994), in which the helmets of Egyptian guards are revealed telescopically by clicking a button. ATMs are objects that may soon possibly become extinct, given the increasing use of virtual currency.
In the Della Rovere courtyard, a portal of arches leads into a long blind wall: this biabsid hall stands as an ambiguous architectural environment, an inside-outside shrouded in constant half-light. This is the access to the apartments of the Duke and Duchess, where Gaillard presents a new body of works titled Penombra (Prelievo): as a germination of metal lamellas, bodies of an animal-military armor are crystallized in their movement. Installed on the doorways of the rooms, acting as portals, these works are accompanied by Tobit Typing, the reversed side outline of a figure from behind, the subject of a 19th-century print of The Blindness of Tobit from a drawing by Rembrandt. Déjà vu of archaic black money demand and consumption that reverberates also in the Villa’s artistic apparatus, where allegories of Danae and the Golden Rain or King Midas are among the subjects of 16th-century frescoes.
Absorbent Figure, 2023, is an aluminum sculpture based on the figure of the ”weeping Buddha,” a souvenir from Indonesia widely dispersed in the Netherlands. According to folklore, it heals the pain of those who touch it. With its new industrial skin, the work was presented in 2023 at the Berlin legendary club Tresor, hinting towards the dynamic of self-destruction and self-preservation embedded in the clubbing experience. The new installation Penombra (Prelievo X) features ATM fragments, in which the indelible ink for tracing banknotes was triggered by attempted robberies.
The new work Porphyr Parking Post is placed outside the Della Rovere courtyard. Its presence gives shape to the artist’s ongoing research about stones and antiquities’ fragments, carried on in dialogue with curator Vittoria Bonifati and stonemason Dante Zanon. By geological formation, stones are always defined as “ancient,” but only a few types were employed in architecture and sculpture since ancient times, such as during the Ptolemaic period. Among them is porphyry, excavated from the now closed Gebel Dokhan quarry in Egypt, which this block, comes from. Porphyr was used by the Egyptians and later by the Romans because of its characteristic red-purple color, a symbol of imperial dignity. The use of this rock was revived in popularity during the Renaissance. In letters to the Duke, architect Genga wrote that he purchased porphyry slabs in Rome, most likely to complete the decorative apparatus of Villa Imperiale, but it seems the porphyry never arrived at its destination.
Invited by Gaillard, Ukrainian multimedia artist Ihor Okuniev composed the sound piece Fields, 2024, which resonates from the courtyard grotto. Part of an evolving work, Fields aims to evoke the atmosphere of the landscape surrounding the artist during the war; field recordings of frozen forests, “cold” winter sounds of nature, complete the synthesized rhythms of the composition. A trace of symbolic and personal memory that becomes a vibrant fragment in the vortex of history.
Curated by Cornelia Mattiacci, Alessandra Castelbarco Albani, Ruggero Pietromarchi
