the work/

Songs/Word Word/Songs, 2020

(Sound installation)

This collaborative work combines a ceramic vase with two flower-like speakers by Brian Eno and a Wall Drawing by David Tremlett. Inside Eno’s vase, a software plays an original track composed by the artist, while Tremlett’s Wall Drawing was painted laying the pastel pigment on the wall with his hands. The letters inside the geometrical figure is a disassembled poem that the artist wrote while listening to Eno’s music, produced by the vase. This collaborative work incorporates the practice of the two English artists, that met for the first time through our gallery. On one side, Eno invades the space with sound waves that move the audience, using digital supports as the main medium for his art. On the other side, Tremlett transforms the space through archetypal geometric shapes, using the palms of his hands to paint in an extremely analogic – almost primitive – way. These two artistic approaches may seem antithetical at first, but they must be observed though the lens of spirituality, a concept that both artists decline in their personal way: songs, words, shapes and colours concretize a contemporary mysticism, that invites the viewer to pause and contemplate the artwork and its surrounding space.

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the artists/

Brian Eno

Brian Eno (Woodbridge, United Kingdom, 1948) is one of the most influential voices in of art and contemporary music, since the early Seventies. Father of the ambient music and the Generative Art, he is interested in researching the concept of slowness in our high-paced contemporary world, through installations that invite the audience to pause and contemplate with calm, investing our time in digesting his sounds and colours in a true multisensorial experience. In his famous Lightboxes, the random combination of colours and lights expand the boundaries of the time and surrounding space, providing the viewer with a glimpse of infinite. He has always been an advocate in humanitarian causes, such as when he realized project of music therapy in Bosnia, between 1995 and 1997, for the children that experienced the civil war.

His works are exhibited in such important museums and collections as the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), the Contemporary Arts Museum (Houston), New Museum of Contemporary Art (New York), Vancouver Art Gallery, Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), Centre Pompidou (Parigi), Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), Baltic Art Centre (Gateshead) and at the Biennale di Venezia (Venice).

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David Tremlett

David Tremlett (Dartford, United Kingdom, 1945) is an artist that works with different media – sculpture, installations and pictures. He began to practice art through sculpture, nourishing his imaginary thanks to his numerous journeys in different countries that allowed him to experience different cultures and models. By the end of the 60s, he dedicated himself to the Wall Drawings, using primarily pastels layered directly with his palms. According to him “walls, sculptures, drawings can speak and tell stories, they can communicate an echo. They are objects, they are rigid; walls, sculptures and drawings are three-dimensional, they produce space and they have volume”. This quote, taken from his Manifesto (1987), represents in a few words his poetic. Tremlett’s Wall Paintings explore the relationship between art, architecture and decoration through processes similar to musical compositions, in their genesis and realization. It is an alphabet made by signs: it’s clear and essential, universal and multifaceted, expressing through ephemeral media like pigment pastels. His practice is very primitive, rediscovering a primordial way of making art and relating to the mural paintings of the first human settlements, especially the ones in the caves. For Tremlett, shapes and colours are the heart of our daily experience: his paintings talk about a new and harmonic dialogue with the architecture. Often working within abandoned or dismissed places, like ancient churches or ruined buildings, Tremlett’s works are spread worldwide among museums, public spaces or private buildings. In Italy, it is worth to remember his site-specific works in four chapel around the Langhe (in Piedmont) and the requalification of a monastery in Bari. His works are exhibited in such important museums and collections as Tate Britain (London), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), Grenoble Museum and the Museum of Modern Art (New York).

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