Edoardo Tresoldi's Sacral, a wire mesh temple evoking Dante, arrives in Ravenna

A wire mesh temple comes to Ravenna: it’s Sacral, the work by Edoardo Tresoldi arrives at the MAR - City Art Museum of Ravenna for the exhibition A POP Epic, the third in the exhibition project Dante. The Eyes and the Mind, from Sept. 1 and until the conclusion of the exhibition on Jan. 9, 2022. Sacral will be set up at the Sacral Museum cloister.

Tresoldi is the artist of “Absent Matter” and wire mesh cathedrals: after the reconstruction of the early Christian Basilica of Siponto, awarded the Gold Medal for Italian Architecture, the large installation Etherea in the United States for the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival and Opera, the intervention on the Reggio Calabria waterfront, the artist exhibits in Ravenna Sacral, made in 2016 and remounted here for the occasion. Edoardo Tresoldi was chosen by the curator of the exhibition’s contemporary art itinerary, Giorgia Salerno, to represent the theme of Souls and to ideally reinterpret Dante’s Castello degli Spiriti di Magni with a large installation that allows the public to experience an imaginative place by entering into full dialogue with the surrounding landscape.

The “Noble Castle,” as also defined by the Poet in the 4th canto of the Inferno, is an emblematic place inhabited by those who left honor and fame on earth; They are the spiriti magni of antiquity, they are philosophers, poets, scientists and writers, with late and grave eyes, who in earthly life were supreme men for their moral qualities but are destined for eternal suffering because they lack the theological virtues. With Sacral, installed in the 16th-century cloister of the city’s Museum of Art, originally the site of the monastery of the canons of Santa Maria in Porto, devoted to the worship of the Greek Madonna whom Dante himself mentions in Paradise, a canticle concluded during his Ravenna years, the aim is to offer the public an opportunity to physically enter the work, ideally in the Noble Castle and, in an almost performative action, retrace Dante’s journey.

“An archetypal image,” said Edoardo Tresoldi, “is able to make past and present dialogue through a language consisting of meanings that return in time. Inside the 16th-century cloister of the MAR, Sacral presents itself as the memory of a place already encountered, a familiar image that introduces the visitor to Dante’s path.” The contemporary art path, within the exhibition, winds through different Dantean themes such as souls, the journey, female figures, dreams and light, chosen to lead the audience along the exhibition itinerary. For each theme, one or more artists were chosen to reinterpret, through the works, places and characters from Dante’s Comedy.

Edoardo Tresoldi investigates the poetics of the dialogue between man and landscape using architectural language as an expressive tool and key to interpreting space. The artist plays with the transparency of wire mesh to transcend the space-time dimension and narrate a dialogue between Art and the World, a visual synthesis that is revealed in the fading of the physical limits of his works. Born in Milan, after his art studies he moved to Rome where he worked in the fields of sculpture, set design and cinema, fields that provide him with a heterogeneous vision of the arts. In the contrasts of the contemporary landscape, the sculptor recognizes his Genius Loci of belonging and identifies contamination as the founding principle of his work. Since 2013 he has been making installations in public spaces, archaeological contexts, festivals and exhibitions around the world.

In the photo: Sacral by Edoardo Tresoldi. Photo by Fabiano Caputo

Edoardo Tresoldi's Sacral, a wire mesh temple evoking Dante, arrives in Ravenna

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