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Sassifraga
Ombrosa

In ‘Sassifraga Ombrosa’ (1982) and Notturna, within this complex of semiotic elements it is the relationship between architectural iconography and the sound’ stream which is emphasised: the architecture (in the first case the Neoclassical facade of Villa Ponti in Varese[read]and in the second the fifteenth-century cloister of the Pinacoteca in Volterra) is adopted as a framework for the interaction of a number of semiotic structures: the relationships between the human body, light, sound and architectural space create a complex network of correspondences through processes of juxtaposition and interference. In Varese, the form of the villa facade is at first delineated and subsequently decomposed in an illusionistic breakdown of surface perspective which seems to reveal the interior of the villa while being in fact a bizarre, imaginary reconstruction of its inner structure. Violated in this way, the entire building appears to be a gigantic ghostly illusion around which the villa gardens extend as an integral part of the work: the accompanying sound-track traces the profile of the facade weaving into the interior, describing a labyrinthine network in which the spectator is alternately lost and refound.[/read]

Sassifraga Ombrosa. Environmental and sound installation, Varese, Villa Ponti, 1982 [PE0016]