Art Curator
Second Order Reality @MAXXI L’Aquila
Second Order Reality
28.06-28.07.2024
Carola Bonfili
Curated by Daniela Cotimbo and Ilaria Gianni
Promoted by Fondazione smART – polo per l’arte
MAXXI, L’Aquila
Supported by the Italian Council (2022), Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity, Italian Ministry of Culture
Ph Alessia Calzecchi
The project, curated by Ilaria Gianni and Daniela Cotimbo and promoted by the Fondazione smART, is realized thanks to the support of the Italian Council (11th edition, 2022), an international promotion program for Italian art by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture.
With Second Order Reality, Carola Bonfili investigates the possibilities of constructing a narrative through different media, particularly virtual reality. The artist’s specific focus is on those perceptual states that characterize, for example, the experience of navigating virtual worlds and which are part of that “magical thinking” typical of children. The ability to enter and exit different kinds of subjectivity, the interest in liminal spaces, in time gaps and thresholds, are elements with which we are familiar during childhood but which we then somehow tend to downgrade to the margins of our experience. Building on her interest in texts such as Gustave Flaubert’s The Temptation of St. Anthony or H. G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau, Bonfili reclaims these authors’ fascination with such transitory states. The focus, more specifically, on Flaubert’s text stems from the description of the repeated hallucinations experienced by its protagonist, Anthony Abbot, inside a hut.
Starting from these impressions, Carola Bonfili develops a narrative that she deconstructs and declines through different media: a CGI video conceived as a trailer, an immersive VR environment and a series of sculptures, with the aim of bringing a video game to life. The protagonist of the story is M’ling, a little monkey who suddenly sees certain parts of its body petrifying and embarks on an initiatory journey in search of healing. In The Stone Monkey (video) and in Level 1, Illusions that we should have, but don’t (VR installation), a succession of mysterious events move the dynamics of the narrative, by constantly displacing the point of adherence to reality. Here even the sounds, created by sound artist Francesco D’Abbraccio, play a crucial role by creating actual “sound objects” and amplifying the unsettling quality of the whole experience. The deliberately fragmented nature of the project, is emphasized by the presence of sculptural elements that draw on some of the themes and on the imagery of the narrative, translating them into physical elements.
If M’ling and Tanky Pear are reproductions of the main characters and recall action figures produced in the field of gaming, The Stone Monkey’PBR consists of a series of spherical sculptures that evolved from PBRs or physical renders, digital objects used in 3D modeling to display texture samples. Finally, The Multicrane retrieves the technique of Walt Disney’s early animations. A tribute to a craftsmanship that persists as a method even in its approach to the digital. Every aspect of the story is the result of a careful construction that combines different languages and eras: from 19th-century literature to Brutalist architecture; from contemporary comics to generative artificial intelligence. Through Second Order Reality, Bonfili reveals how a single story turns out to be potentially infinite and how its facets depend on the chosen modes of expression in a constant and fragmentary cross-reference that leaves plenty of room to imagination.
A narrative which will also be developed through a catalogue published by NERO Editions.
Second Order Reality will soon be part of MAXXI’s Collection.
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