Luca Trevisani

Luca Trevisani’s spectacular five-channel video installation, Glaucomelo, 2014, is installed in the lower galleries of the Museo Marino Marini, rooms the Florentine institution has set aside for work by young artists. Trevisani’s previous output has examined matter moving through various states. In this particular piece, water traverses different stages of rarefaction and condensation. The work seems to be a pretext the artist uses to more generally address the rhythm of a material that wheezes like a breath, opening up and then compressing.

The film was presented at the 2013 Rome International Film Festival and was followed by a book and, now, this installation. Trevisani typically works on a large scale. He often uses a Red Epic digital camera, collaborates with a film crew—including a director of photography, an assistant director, and electricians—and he has had the support of film producers. The generative process of this project is revealing: Trevisani had shot a tremendous amount of video, which he then edited, first into a film and then into this installation. The two works present different if visually similar scenes. And while the film claims to be narrative, the installation instead activates an environment in which the viewer is totally involved and where the sounds offered are manipulations of field recordings made where filming occurred. The setting also becomes a synesthetic site—images and sounds activate other senses as well.

Translated from Italian by Marguerite Shore.