The Day He Swims thru Marrakech

The exhibition explores the relationship between the sculptural object and the image in motion, through a sequence of photographs and hybrid objects (stands from film sets that support natural elements, with stage lighting). Not just cinema, not just sculpture, the selected set of works springs from the same narrative source, namely La controfigura (slated for release in September 2017), the first feature-length film by Rä di Martino. The film is freely based on the feature film The Swimmer from 1964, starring Burt Lancaster. Di Martino takes her cue from both the story and the film to capture the suspended atmospheres of this famous surreal tale, in which a middle-aged man swims from pool to pool to cross the city to return home, re-living his life through a metaphorical voyage. In the re-enactment of the film di Martino chooses to set her version of the story in an equally metaphysical Marrakech, a contradictory city, ancient and modern at the same time, true and false, and in any case the reflection of a bourgeoisie in search of new motivations. 

The photographs and stands are two apparently contradictory instruments of a single narrative. Room after room, the viewer is prompted to observe the scenes from the inside and from the outside.

These hybrid objects refocus the attention on the making of the image, on cinema in cinema, and on the analysis of the film devices themselves that make it possible to construct new meanings of history" 

Paola Nicolin