mare/FLUX – Antonio Rovaldi – Torno indietro un attimo
Torno indietro un attimo is a project conceived by artist Antonio Rovaldi on the Adige River as part of FLUX – River Interventions and Explorations. During multiple excursions between summer and autumn 2023, Rovaldi meticulously traversed the river at a deliberate walking pace, charting a movement that encompasses stratifications, sedimentations, and erosions.
The culmination of this journey is a photographic series on film, where the perspectives of the landscape oscillate between verticality and horizontality. These images capture the river from various angles, seeking traces in the sand, along the banks, and among the rocks, while observing the passage of time. The project has been developed into an exhibition and a book, and it will spread across the city in the public space of billboards, bringing distant river imagery from the artist’s other photographic projects to Bolzano. Furthermore, the project encompasses two events organized in collaboration with its partners.
The exhibition
The photographic series is displayed in the exhibition with thirty-seven prints and a broad collection of slides. Torno indietro un attimo is a non-linear photographic sequence, weaving together a plurality of perspectives in conjunction with places, personal memories, geological eras, and encounters with inhabitants living in different geographical areas: from the mountain landscapes of the source on the border between Italy and Austria, to the extensive Venetian plain where the light warms and the river’s line flattens out, moving gently through its bends until it reaches the vastness of the horizon in the Adriatic Sea.
Antonio Rovaldi tells an extensive and elastic geography composed of landscapes that multiply, intertwine, and reflect through a narrative of contaminations among different places and epochs. Throughout the year, the artist has returned multiple times along the riverbanks, moving with or against the current to explore the margin of human activity in a territory deeply marked and constructed.
Complementing the photographic series, the exhibition also includes a sound installation titled Ludwig and the video 20” fermo davanti o di fianco al fiume inspiro schiena dritta braccia tese Adige 2023-24.
The book
The book titled Morgen – Torno indietro un attimo, published by Quodlibet, combines all the photographs taken by Antonio Rovaldi and completes the project with texts by Esther Kinsky, one of the most significant authors of contemporary literature, and an exchange of letters between the artist and Marco Avanzini, geologist at the MUSE in Trento, and an introduction text by Angelika Burtscher and Daniele Lupo, curators of the project.
Two steps forward and one step back, to a syncopated rhythm, we trace the Adige along its course, from its source on the border between Italy and Austria to its mouth in the Adriatic Sea. The sequence of images and words encapsulated here renders the fragmentary nature of the river in all its geographic complexity.
15.05–15.06.2024
Exhibition
Antonio Rovaldi. Torno indietro un attimo
curated by Angelika Burtscher and Daniele Lupo
Foto Forum / Via Weggenstein 3, Bolzano
Tuesday–Friday, 3-7pm; Saturday 10am-12pm
Opening: Tuesday, 14.05.2024, 7pm
With a dialogue between Esther Kinsky and Antonio Rovaldi
Finissage: Saturday, 08.06.2024, 11 am
Torno indietro un attimo
Guided tour of the exhibition with a conversation between the author Esther Kinsky and the artist Antonio Rovaldi
Moderated by the project curators Angelika Burtscher, Daniele Lupo
Foto Forum / Via Weggenstein 3, Bolzano
03–16.06.2024
Public billboards, Bolzano
Monday, 24.06.2024, 5pm
Public presentation
Ca’ Bottacin, NICHE (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia)
14–30.09.2024
Installation Torno indietro un attimo
Festival Grenze Arsenali Fotografici, Verona
Opening: Saturday 14.09.2024, 6pm
Antonio Rovaldi studied at NABA in Milan with Hidetoshi Nagasawa and Mario Cresci. Since then, his artistic practice has explored the perception of landscape through photography, video, sculptu-re and sound installation. His research often relies on the direct exploration of places, through wal-king and staying.
Born in 1975 in Parma, he lives in Milan, where he also initiated the artist-run spa-ce Cler (@clerviapadova27) at his studio, in which he creates dialogues with the practices of other artists.
Having lived in New York between 2006 and 2016, in 2006 he won the New York Prize from Columbia University and in 2009 he was Artist in Residence at ISCP in Brooklyn. His publications include Orizzonte in Italia (2015), a photographic exploration along all the Italian coasts, travelled along by bicycle to capture the horizon line, and The Sound of the Woodpecker Bill: New York City (2018), a photographic novel dedicated to the edges of the five boroughs of New York, traced on foot between 2016 and 2018.
The project Torno indietro un attimo is supported by Strategia Fotografia 2023, promoted by Directorate- General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture and co-financed by Autonomous Province of Bolzano/Bozen – South Tyrol and City of Bolzano. The project is produced by Foto Forum and Lungomare and staged in collaboration with NICHE, University Ca’ Foscari in Venice and Grenze-Arsenali Fotografici, Verona. The photographic series will become part of the collection of Museion – Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Bozen/Bolzano.
Year
2023 – ongoing
