Il decollo & Il fiore del 1001 notte

Description:

This was a touring exhibition of two video works, II decollo and Il fiore delle 1001 notte. These videos were a part of the Italian pavilion at the 1999 Venice Biennale, which won the Golden Lion award for best national participation. This was Grazia Toderi’s first solo exhibition in North America.

The darkened gallery merged with the nocturnal and expansive setting of the videos. Through the use of flight as movement and framing through aerial perspectives, the sense of levitating becomes a metaphor for suspended meaning. Toderi’s interest in the moving images of media culture and human finitude is contrasted with her formal techniques of employing light in a cosmic way and looping her videos as infinite projections.

In Il decollo (The Takeoff), the viewer has a nighttime bird’s-eye view above an illuminated stadium. Toderi manipulated a television recording of the 1998 FIFA World Cup final at the Stade de France to accentuate the flood of stadium lights and the stadium’s elliptical form, transforming it into a sort of spaceship.

Toderi’s privileged overhead viewpoint, removed from the micro context of the spectacle of nationalism through sport with only ambient sound to convey the intense emotions of a far-away crowd, reconnects to the stadium’s ancient role as a space for play and performance.

Inspired by Pier Paolo Pasolini's film Arabian Nights (1974), II fiore delle 1001 notte (The flower of 1001 nights) is set in a mediated Baghdad only known to the artist through fairy tales and television images.

Toderi structures the void of space as diaramic scenes, using computer graphics and tiny models shot on the artist’s kitchen table. The video’s celestial texture is layered with flashes of stars and flying objects—miniature umbrellas become radar dishes and romping spaceships dance an elegant ballet

This exhibition was in partnership with the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Vancouver. An exhibition opening reception took place on March 17, 2000. This exhibition was part of the decentre series.