Vincenzo Marsiglia (Belvedere Marittimo, Cosenza, 1972) takes the observer right to the heart of his installations. Observers take possession of the space through an experience: they produce images and sounds by moving their own bodies and penetrate the installation's architecture so deeply that they become the bearing structure and the dynamic connector of the work itself.
The exhibition features three environmental installations, characterised by a plain use of contemporary technology, so that observers are involved in a physical but also emotional experience, between the perceptual aesthetic of objects and the sensorial release beyond the visible.
As Gianluca Marziani argues: “Marsiglia codifies a digital imagery of his own, drawing on the iconographical roots of collective memory. He proves the humanistic value of technology accurately melting heavy (furniture, objects, frames…) and light (webcams, apps, monitors…), creating performative elements which actually break the limits intrinsic to their own static nature”.
The fil rouge underlying the whole exhibition is the four-pointed star, the artist's signature logo. The “Unità Marsiglia” star turns from a symbol of manifold iconic meanings into an identifying open-content logo. The star is featured on different materials, ranging from the brocades to the pottery of the ancient Albissola tradition, like a sort of flexible and mimetic trademark moulding to the dimensions of reality. Already in the first room, Marsiglia's star is to be found on a Baroque wallpaper, on the sofa woven from iridescent threads, on the pottery carpet. Moreover, pieces of furniture are interconnected through an interactive system where a polarised mirror with an eighteen-century frame displays both the real and the digital image of the observer, who is therefore thrown into a whirlwind of surfaces changing at prearranged times.
Complements and electronics turn the gallery into a habitable and heterogeneous environment, a place for cognitive exchange merging three-dimensional objects with technology, so as to invent a “space within the space” and highlight Emmeotto's empathising nature.