Giusy Pirrotta

Waterfall on Fountains

Ceramic glazed, water pump, mini video projector, metal stands, video color and sound, loop, 2020
Installation view at Palazzo Monti, Brescia

"The observer is also central in the research of Giusy Pirrotta (Italy, 1982 - lives and works in Milan), who focuses on the visual experience and mechanics of the components employed in the cinematographic and theatrical mise-en-scène, examining their language and social aspects. The requirements of cinematic vision – a dark environment, the position of the projector, the screen – become for Pirrotta the ground for experimentations that seem to echo early cinema, when the language of this new medium, not yet standardized by industrial logic, saw the coexistence of different experiential levels such as live music and storytelling, which did not necessarily put the filmic component in the foreground.
With the installation Cascata su Fontane (2020) the artist proceeds by removing the conventional expectations of the visitor by subverting their assumptions. The glazed ceramic sculptures are shaped in the form of organic and primitive creatures from uncontaminated worlds or born in a post-apocalyptic scenario. The surface of two of them is crossed by a stream of water that gently flows from the top to end in the lower part of the sculpture. The light reflections visible on the two fountains are caused by the projection that emerges from inside a third sculpture. The projected video is a compositing created by the artist by superimposing images of rocky landscapes with the clip of a waterfall generated in chromakey. The light of projection, investing the two fountains, travels beyond the boundaries of the installation to protrude on the walls of the exhibition space, creating an additional level of image. The soft sound of the water trickling from the fountains, occasionally dominated by the roar of the audio sample of the waterfall coming from the projector, permeates the entire exhibition space. In this sort of pre-cinematic phantasmagoria, the artist invites the viewer to enter the installation to experience its multiple levels. This operation allows a reflection on the screen as the focal point of a passive ritual as opposed to an expanded experience, in which multiple elements require attention. The definition of image that Giusy Pirrotta seems to explore is perhaps once again to be sought in the theory of cinema, in particular in the Russian term Obraz used by the director and film theorist Sergei Eisenstein in his General Theory of Montage (1937) to define a total and synthetic image generated in the observer's mind by the union of heterogeneous visual elements. An image synthetical of our experiences and knowledge towards the observed object, a very personal, private image, but at the same time accessible to all."

Extract from the exhibition catalogue essay written by Matteo Pollini, curator of the exhibition "The Mummy Complex" at Palazzo Monti, 2020