ROBERTO PUGLIESE 'Concerto per Architettura', at the Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro in Milano

PROJECT ROOM #8

19.09 – 19.10.2018

ROBERTO PUGLIESE

Concerto per Architettura

curated by FLAVIO ARENSI

From September 19 to October 19, 2018, the Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro in #milano is holding the solo exhibition of #robertopugliese (Naples, 1982), entitled Concerto per Architettura (Concert for Architecture).

This exhibition is the Foundation’s second appointment with the new Project Room cycle, which gives young curators and artists the chance to make use of the Foundation’s spaces and know-how to bring the latest contemporary trends in sculpture to the public eye.

The Project Room 2018 has been entrusted to Flavio Arensi, who has created Proust’s Room, a project in three acts which provides an opportunity to watch society’s and human events through sounds, absences and presences, of the past like the future. The three phases that follow each other in this room make up a single reflection on the role of sculpture in this historical moment. As Arensi states, “with the work of the three artists involved in the Project Room 2018 we are trying to regain the idea of an enlarged conscience which no longer uses the most traditional sculptural techniques but rather seeks out the deepest concepts through technology and space”.

After Donato Piccolo’s solo show, the second act of the Proust's Room features the Neapolitan artist #robertopugliese, who has conceived Concerto per Architettura, an audio composition created especially for the Project Room spaces, whose architectural plans have been used to reprocess some numerical values which were afterwards assigned to a series of genetic algorithms and complex functions.

These processes, thanks to an acoustic-mathematical relationship, were used to generate the sound material later reworked by Pugliese.

The result is a sound sculpture which, spreading through the Foundation’s spaces, makes the most of the architectural resonances in such a way to give the space back its own “voice”. An actual Concerto per Architettura that will be performed by #robertopugliese on the evening of the opening, and then reproduced for the entire duration of the exhibition. Pietro Lama (1988), a young sound designer and video artist, as well as an ex-pupil of Pugliese, will accompany the artist creating an ad hoc projection coordinated with music.

For the curator, “this sort of musical interlude between the first and last act, also marks the furthest point of a research that transforms sculpture into a new linguistic system, in which space and sound become the work’s intrinsic value. The theme of sculpture, therefore, goes beyond the simple light-space-material scheme to enter in a new semiotic method where the object is joined to sound. If with Piccolo the observer was called to deal with the sculpture-machines, learning to control themselves through dealings with human beings, with Pugliese we come to tackle the vibrational/frequential nature of matter”.

“With a minimal and rigorous organisation – continues Flavio Arensi – Roberto Pugliese’s work requires the visitors to participate together to the space and the musical system; after all even the great Romanian conductor Sergiu Celibidache couldn’t separate the listening to the musical composition from the human and experiential dynamics of the theatrical audience”.

Robert Pugliese’s Concerto per Architettura will be performed as a concert on the opening night (18 September, at 6 pm), then recorded and replayed for the entire duration of the exhibition through an installation specially designed by the artist, flanked by two other of Pugliese’s typical sound sculptures, Score (2016) and Risonanti pressioni materiche (2014), where the sound composed by Pugliese is emitted by a series of small “trumpets” placed next to each other.

Milano, July 2018

Biographical note

Roberto Pugliese was born in Naples in 1982, where he trained; he currently lives and works in Bari. After graduating in Electronic Music at the Conservatorio San Pietro a Majella in Naples under the guidance of Maestro Agostino di Scipio, he divides his time between teaching Multimedia at the Conservatorio di Bari, his musical activities and the production of sound installations. His research mainly draws energy from two artistic currents, that of Sound Art and that of kinetic and programmed art. Using software driven mechanical devices that interact with each other, with the surrounding environment and the user, he tries to examine new areas of research on sound related phenomena, analysing the processes that the human psyche uses to distinguish between natural and artificial structures (both acoustic and visual), the relationship between man and technology, art and technology, without ever losing sight of the visual aspect. Sound, thus, becomes the subject of his research, as well as a means of acoustic and visual expression, vital energy which animates the inanimate, a guide to analyse and stimulate the psyche and human perception.

Project Room #8

ROBERTO PUGLIESE. Concerto per Architettura

Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, Via Vigevano 9 (Milano)

19 September - 19 October 2018

From Tuesday to Friday and every second Saturday of the month, 11 am – 1 pm and 2 pm to 7 pm

Free Entrance