Margherita Morgantin
18 May - 24 Aug 2013
© Margherita Morgantin
2-499989, 2011-2013
red pastel and digital print on paper
49 drawings: 49 x 49 cm each
2-499989, 2011-2013
red pastel and digital print on paper
49 drawings: 49 x 49 cm each
MARGHERITA MORGANTIN
2 - 495701
18 May - 24 August 2013
Galleria Continua is pleased to present 2 –495701, a solo exhibition by Margherita Morgantin, one of Italy’s finest and most interesting artists.
Morgantin employs a range of media, including performance, video, drawing, photography and installation work. Measurements, patterns and attempts to fix and interpret the existent through real or parodied laws give rise, in the artist’s work, to a constantly changing visual language. In her videos the narrative acquires form in the succession of rarefied and fragmentary images; in the drawings, executed with quickly rendered, essential lines, the bond between interior forms and subject acts as an instrument for reading things and for their fragile interpretation.
Morgantin’s studies stem from an exploration of the methods for predicting natural light.
Beginning with this formation of the atmosphere in physics, the artist develops an intimate, personal poetics that holds together mind and feelings, artistic vision and scientific influence.
Her interest in language and its possible wanderings and relations is the reason for her quest, while philosophy and physics are the forms from which to start.
The project presented in this exhibition is the result of work the artist has been pursuing in the last few years, in which the investigation of identity and self-representation is expressed through mathematical models. “In visualizing the infinite series of prime numbers, a methodical process of calculation and visual transcription begun in 2011, Margherita Morgantin traces the inaugural and ambivalent foundation of relations. This numerical sequence of singular numbers, whose succession is not predictable by any formula, begins in fact with two. This is the number identifying the binary system that governed the evolution of the logos in terms of the complementarity of opposites, but which can also designate the constitutive dialogic vocation that discloses the singularity of one only in the opening up to the other, in the coexistence of irreducible differences. Two not as the sum of two units, but as the “contrary of one”, to use the apt expression of Erri De Luca, which establishes in the linking of two-to-two relations the very sense of existence” (Uliana Zanetti, in Autoritratti.
Iscrizione del femminile nell’arte italiana contemporanea, Corraini Edizioni, Bologna 2013).
Since ancient Greek times the succession of prime numbers has been one of the most fascinating scientific mysteries. In the rational universe of mathematics, the prime numbers, those that are only divisible by themselves and by 1, follow one another in an ungraspable, apparently illogical rhythm; they could be defined as the “atoms of arithmetic”, the base elements with which all the other natural numbers are constructed. Morgantin, starting from the idea of looking at how prime numbers are arranged in a simple geometric structure, represents the sequence bydrawing small red squares in a 100 x infinite grid, thereby shifting onto the visual plane what remains an enigma for mathematical reasoning. In the work 2-499979, currently on display at the MAMBO in Bologna, the 52 drawings realized to date by the artist, transposed into a digital format, make up a single, potentially infinite file where the grid disappears, leaving only the small red squares. In the project conceived for Galleria Continua’s Arco dei Becci space, she positions the original drawings (red pastel and digital print on paper) in the form of a horizon redrawn by the unpredictable and mysterious rhythm of small red squares, which questions us about the passage from 1 to 2:“the first sum that basically does not recognize an alterity,”says the artist, “but which must come to terms with infinity”.
Margherita Morgantinwas born in Venice in 1971. She took a degree at the Department of Technical Physics of the Venice University Institute of Architecture. She lives in Milan, Venice and elsewhere.
Solo exhibitions include: Blue Brancaccio, L’A project space, Palermo (2013); Educazione europea, Contemporane-act, Brussels(2010); Margherita Morgantin, Galleria Civica del Contemporaneo, Mestre, Venice; Air Drawing, Galleria Continua, San Gimignano (2009); Il pensiero veloce e altre dimensioni, MAN Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Nuoro (2008); Palermo_Zen (White Rainbow), ZEN 2neighbourhood, Palermo (2007); Download-now #4, Fondazione Olivetti, Rome (2005); Codice sorgente, Galleria Continua, San Gimignano (2004);Baggage Identification Tag, Casa Musumeci Greco, Rome(2004); Spazio aperto, Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Bologna (2003); Arte all’Arte 7, project for the Teatro de’ Leggieri inSan Gimignano, Palazzo delle Papesse, Siena (2002).
She has contributed to many group shows in Italy and abroad, including: Autoritratti. Inscrizioni del femminile nell’arte italiana contemporanea, exhibition coordinated by Uliana Zanetti, MAMBO, Bologna(2013); agenti autonomi e sistemi multiagente, with Michele di Stefano MK, forAccademie Eventuali, Museo di Palazzo Pepoli, Bologna(2012); Io, tu, lui, lei,Fondazione Bevilacqua LaMasa, Venice; Obbligo di transito, Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, San Gimignano (2013); PPS//Meetings#2, Museo Riso, Palermo; Terre vulnerabili, HangarBicocca, Milan; La Giovine Italia, Festival Europeo di Fotografia, Reggio Emilia (2011); suspence, Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Venice; Squares of Rome, MOCA, Shanghai; No Soul for Sale, Viafarini at the Tate Modern, London (2010); Isola mondo, fringe event at the 53rd Venice Biennale, Torre Massimiliana, Isola di S.Erasmo, Venice; Il cielo in una stanza, Galleria Comunaled’Arte Contemporanea di Monfalcone (2009); re.act.feminism, Akademie der Künste, Berlin(2008); Poi Piovve dentro l’alta fantasia, Museo Marino Marini, Florence(2007); D’ombra, Compton Verney Art Museum, Warwickshire andMAN, Nuoro (2007); Videoreport Italia 2004-05, Galleria Comunale d’Arte Contemporanea di Monfalcone (2006); Passaggi a sud est, storie, memorie, attraversamenti, XII Biennale Donna,Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Ferrara(2006); Il potere delle donne/The Power of Women, Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea, Trento (2006); Conaltri occhi, Palazzo della Ragione, Milan(2005); Aperto per lavori in corso, PAC, Milan(2005); Allineamenti,Trinitateskirche, Cologne(2005); Sweet taboo, Kompleksi-Goldi, Tirana, Albania,Tirana Biennale 3,episode II (2005); Empowerment, Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Villa Croce, Villa Mombrini, Genoa (2004).
Margherita Morgantin has published a book of short writings and drawings, entitled Titolo variabile, Quodlibet, Macerata, 2009, and co-authored Agenti autonomi e sistemi multiagentewith Michele Di Stefano, Quodibet, Macerata, 2012.
The authors write: “This publication has been conceived as a text book for a seminar on performance and the physics of happening; as an experiment in the construction and sharing of a space and of a discourse between a choreographer and a visual artist. One of the reasons why we met is because we both spend time in the zone of eco-semantics around words, a peripheral area of the implications of language in life. The confusion in this area can be profound; the attraction for instructions, safety systems and technical registers inevitable. Our works play on this tension between maximum control and complete disorientation. We will start with the words and investigate the relationship between words and bodies, to produce and not to produce images.
2 - 495701
18 May - 24 August 2013
Galleria Continua is pleased to present 2 –495701, a solo exhibition by Margherita Morgantin, one of Italy’s finest and most interesting artists.
Morgantin employs a range of media, including performance, video, drawing, photography and installation work. Measurements, patterns and attempts to fix and interpret the existent through real or parodied laws give rise, in the artist’s work, to a constantly changing visual language. In her videos the narrative acquires form in the succession of rarefied and fragmentary images; in the drawings, executed with quickly rendered, essential lines, the bond between interior forms and subject acts as an instrument for reading things and for their fragile interpretation.
Morgantin’s studies stem from an exploration of the methods for predicting natural light.
Beginning with this formation of the atmosphere in physics, the artist develops an intimate, personal poetics that holds together mind and feelings, artistic vision and scientific influence.
Her interest in language and its possible wanderings and relations is the reason for her quest, while philosophy and physics are the forms from which to start.
The project presented in this exhibition is the result of work the artist has been pursuing in the last few years, in which the investigation of identity and self-representation is expressed through mathematical models. “In visualizing the infinite series of prime numbers, a methodical process of calculation and visual transcription begun in 2011, Margherita Morgantin traces the inaugural and ambivalent foundation of relations. This numerical sequence of singular numbers, whose succession is not predictable by any formula, begins in fact with two. This is the number identifying the binary system that governed the evolution of the logos in terms of the complementarity of opposites, but which can also designate the constitutive dialogic vocation that discloses the singularity of one only in the opening up to the other, in the coexistence of irreducible differences. Two not as the sum of two units, but as the “contrary of one”, to use the apt expression of Erri De Luca, which establishes in the linking of two-to-two relations the very sense of existence” (Uliana Zanetti, in Autoritratti.
Iscrizione del femminile nell’arte italiana contemporanea, Corraini Edizioni, Bologna 2013).
Since ancient Greek times the succession of prime numbers has been one of the most fascinating scientific mysteries. In the rational universe of mathematics, the prime numbers, those that are only divisible by themselves and by 1, follow one another in an ungraspable, apparently illogical rhythm; they could be defined as the “atoms of arithmetic”, the base elements with which all the other natural numbers are constructed. Morgantin, starting from the idea of looking at how prime numbers are arranged in a simple geometric structure, represents the sequence bydrawing small red squares in a 100 x infinite grid, thereby shifting onto the visual plane what remains an enigma for mathematical reasoning. In the work 2-499979, currently on display at the MAMBO in Bologna, the 52 drawings realized to date by the artist, transposed into a digital format, make up a single, potentially infinite file where the grid disappears, leaving only the small red squares. In the project conceived for Galleria Continua’s Arco dei Becci space, she positions the original drawings (red pastel and digital print on paper) in the form of a horizon redrawn by the unpredictable and mysterious rhythm of small red squares, which questions us about the passage from 1 to 2:“the first sum that basically does not recognize an alterity,”says the artist, “but which must come to terms with infinity”.
Margherita Morgantinwas born in Venice in 1971. She took a degree at the Department of Technical Physics of the Venice University Institute of Architecture. She lives in Milan, Venice and elsewhere.
Solo exhibitions include: Blue Brancaccio, L’A project space, Palermo (2013); Educazione europea, Contemporane-act, Brussels(2010); Margherita Morgantin, Galleria Civica del Contemporaneo, Mestre, Venice; Air Drawing, Galleria Continua, San Gimignano (2009); Il pensiero veloce e altre dimensioni, MAN Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Nuoro (2008); Palermo_Zen (White Rainbow), ZEN 2neighbourhood, Palermo (2007); Download-now #4, Fondazione Olivetti, Rome (2005); Codice sorgente, Galleria Continua, San Gimignano (2004);Baggage Identification Tag, Casa Musumeci Greco, Rome(2004); Spazio aperto, Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Bologna (2003); Arte all’Arte 7, project for the Teatro de’ Leggieri inSan Gimignano, Palazzo delle Papesse, Siena (2002).
She has contributed to many group shows in Italy and abroad, including: Autoritratti. Inscrizioni del femminile nell’arte italiana contemporanea, exhibition coordinated by Uliana Zanetti, MAMBO, Bologna(2013); agenti autonomi e sistemi multiagente, with Michele di Stefano MK, forAccademie Eventuali, Museo di Palazzo Pepoli, Bologna(2012); Io, tu, lui, lei,Fondazione Bevilacqua LaMasa, Venice; Obbligo di transito, Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, San Gimignano (2013); PPS//Meetings#2, Museo Riso, Palermo; Terre vulnerabili, HangarBicocca, Milan; La Giovine Italia, Festival Europeo di Fotografia, Reggio Emilia (2011); suspence, Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Venice; Squares of Rome, MOCA, Shanghai; No Soul for Sale, Viafarini at the Tate Modern, London (2010); Isola mondo, fringe event at the 53rd Venice Biennale, Torre Massimiliana, Isola di S.Erasmo, Venice; Il cielo in una stanza, Galleria Comunaled’Arte Contemporanea di Monfalcone (2009); re.act.feminism, Akademie der Künste, Berlin(2008); Poi Piovve dentro l’alta fantasia, Museo Marino Marini, Florence(2007); D’ombra, Compton Verney Art Museum, Warwickshire andMAN, Nuoro (2007); Videoreport Italia 2004-05, Galleria Comunale d’Arte Contemporanea di Monfalcone (2006); Passaggi a sud est, storie, memorie, attraversamenti, XII Biennale Donna,Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Ferrara(2006); Il potere delle donne/The Power of Women, Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea, Trento (2006); Conaltri occhi, Palazzo della Ragione, Milan(2005); Aperto per lavori in corso, PAC, Milan(2005); Allineamenti,Trinitateskirche, Cologne(2005); Sweet taboo, Kompleksi-Goldi, Tirana, Albania,Tirana Biennale 3,episode II (2005); Empowerment, Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Villa Croce, Villa Mombrini, Genoa (2004).
Margherita Morgantin has published a book of short writings and drawings, entitled Titolo variabile, Quodlibet, Macerata, 2009, and co-authored Agenti autonomi e sistemi multiagentewith Michele Di Stefano, Quodibet, Macerata, 2012.
The authors write: “This publication has been conceived as a text book for a seminar on performance and the physics of happening; as an experiment in the construction and sharing of a space and of a discourse between a choreographer and a visual artist. One of the reasons why we met is because we both spend time in the zone of eco-semantics around words, a peripheral area of the implications of language in life. The confusion in this area can be profound; the attraction for instructions, safety systems and technical registers inevitable. Our works play on this tension between maximum control and complete disorientation. We will start with the words and investigate the relationship between words and bodies, to produce and not to produce images.