Massimo Bartolini: Concert room with voices
October 4 – November 1, 2008
Opening Reception: October 4, 6-8pm
Performance on Saturday October 4: Pietro Riparbelli will play percussion and sound sources from Charles Ives's Piano Sonata No. 2, Concord, Mass. and Three Quarter-Tone Pieces

D’Amelio Terras is pleased to present a new video installation by Italian artist Massimo Bartolini for his first major solo show in New York. Bartolini's practice embraces various materials and techniques, from sculpture and performance to photography and video. Bartolini's artworks are highly experiential, inviting the viewer to reflect and potentially perceive the world in new ways.

The installation consists of two rotating archives. Video projectors placed on each rotating shelf cast eight images that traverse the gallery walls. The images presented are from footage shot in the courtyard of a former psychiatric hospital weeks before the space was to be condemned and destroyed. Together, the projectors function as a brain cycling through flashbacks of stored memories and disseminating them out onto the gallery walls.

In the videos, workers throw heaters from windows, an old hospital assistant describes past incidents and sounds of visitors are distant and muffled. Oreste Fernando Nannetti, a patient of the hospital for over thirty years, uses his belt buckle to scratch nonsensical graffiti sentences about his family genealogy, current events, and warfare into the walls. The carousel of images spins constantly, creating a feeling of disorientation for the viewer while mimicking the atmosphere, the cacophony of sounds, and the overall sensory experience of the enclosed courtyard of the psychiatric hospital.

Massimo Bartolini’s recent solo exhibitions include: Firth Street Gallery, London, United Kingdom; IKON Gallery, Birmingham, United Kingdom; MAXXI, Rome, Italy; and Museu Serralves, Porto, Portugal. Bartolini has had additional solo exhibitions at: GAM Turin Magazzini d'arte Moderna in Rome, Italy; Galleria Massimo de Carlo, Milan, Italy; and Museum Abteiberg, Monchengladbach, Germany. In 2006, Bartolini was included in the Shanghai Biennial and presented a site-specific installation at Art 37 Basel. In 2001, his large-scale sculpture that featured a perpetual wave was installed in the courtyard of PS1/MoMA in New York.