Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening:
1. Gonzalo Borondo, “Settimo Giorno”

2. Graciela Iturbide in”Investigation” – Art in the Twenty-First-Century. Via Art21

3. INDECLINE – The United States of Apathy

BSA Special Feature: Gonzalo Borondo, “Settimo Giorno”

Borondo’s latest exhibition, titled “Settimo Giorno” (Seventh Day), is an immersive artistic experience that combines visual, poetic, and auditory elements to delve into the themes of creation, transformation, and the delicate balance between chaos and tranquility.

The artist is taking inspiration from the ancient text of the book of Genesis to explore the first six days of creation artistically. The exhibition is well placed here in the Former Church of San Mattia, which adds a unique atmosphere of reflection, tranquility, and silence to the experience.

Borondo incorporates video as the primary medium of expression; over sixty of them, consisting of manipulated cyanotype photograms, are placed in the church’s six chapels and the altar, visually recounting the creation myth’s six days. These videos, created through a combination of analog development techniques and modern 3D technology, bridge the gap between the past and present, both technically and conceptually, between architecture, dialogue, heritage, and contemporary.

Alongside the visual elements, the exhibition incorporates poetic elements. Ángela Segovia, a renowned Spanish poet and winner of the National Poetry Prize in Spain, provides recorded snippets of text that are whispered by herself, creating an immersive experience for the visitors.

SETTIMO GIORNO at the Ex St. Mattia Church – Gonzalo Borondo

Graciela Iturbide in”Investigation” – Art in the Twenty-First-Century. Via Art21

“For Graciela Iturbide, the camera is a pretext for understanding the world. Her principal concern has been the photographic investigation of Mexico—her own cultural environment—through black-and-white images of landscapes and their inhabitants, abstract compositions, and self-portraits. Whether photographing indigenous communities in her native country, cholos in Los Angeles, Frida Kahlo’s house, or the landscape of the American South, her interest, she says, lies in what her heart feels and what her eyes see.”

INDECLINE – The United States of Apathy

In a stabbingly brutal way, street art/conceptual artist collective INDECLINE juxtaposes the photos of people killed by gun violence with smarmy fatuous unaware patriotic lyrics that rise and fall. Fall mostly. It’s a stunning contrast that brings the story home. It’s also a reductivist critique and somehow targets, if you will, victims and the guilty with similar contempt. You get the point, but a viewer may feel strangely like it misses it too. These victims didn’t ask to become spokespeople, and their families grieve them without fail daily.

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