Studio Azzurro

Studio Azzurro is an artistic research studio, that bases its expression on the languages afforded by recent technology. 

I composed soundtracks with Giovanni Venosta  , for different video projects from 1986 to 1990.

Two pyramids

Milano , 1984

A large pyramid in PVC occupies the entire surface of the courtyard of the Palazzo del Senato. The structure is supported by eleven thousand cubic meters of hot air: a pyramid – emblem of monumentality and heavy materiality – which becomes light, transparent, ephemeral (the installation lasts only one day).

Inside, some monitors arranged in an inverted pyramid create the decomposed and recombined image of a natural environment - the orange grove of Venus by Botticelli - in which three dancers move, in an attempt to recompose their logical wholeness. 

An orange moves from screen to screen and the gap that remains between one monitor and another becomes the space of freedom where the viewer's imagination flows. Entering the PVC pyramid is like entering a gigantic screen, a synthetic environment made up of hot air, at the center of which an unstoppable machine of gestures and sounds pulsates.

Stories for racing

Milano , 1984

In the constant acceleration imposed by this era, only the effects of the movement seem to be perceived, but no longer the cause. With this underlying sensation comes the idea of ​​experiencing a trap: a rope stretched across this crazy race. Stories for racing are born.

The device consists of a series of monitors arranged on the ground with the screen horizontally, side by side. In the screens, elusive images are channeled, like a fluid flowing from one television to another, showing only the guidelines of the movement. 

It is a fast-paced rhythm, a treadmill of video images, which suddenly stops when this proceeding is crossed by unpredictable apparitions. Stumbling into the event, the speed freezes, freezes in a single image. 

Then, from the interrupted flow of the video, this figure emerges and frees itself into the environment, in the slow succession of images dissolved by two slide projectors. 

Electronic curtain

Ivrea , 1985

The electronic curtain is a barrier of thirty-two televisions capable of separating environments, of retaining and breaking up memories, of postponing sounds and images of things that have happened or that must happen. 

It appears like the swaying of an electronic fabric. In the curtain, between the folds of the corner screens, the videos combine different stories, made up of gestures, movements and expectations, with an apparent complete meaning. 

Televisions are pieces of a complex luminous mosaic, as different from each other as the inhabitants of distant universes.

The land of sky

Ivrea , 1985

Giuliano Mauri designs a work-installation that occupies the entire former church of San Carpoforo in Milan. The result is suggestive and engaging. 

A veritable forest of carefully arranged sticks draws a Gothic structure inside a Baroque church. The comparison between the high stone walls and the solid complex of the wooden structure appears both paradoxical and consequential. 

At no point does the interweaving of the branches collapse with the solid perimeter of the wall construction, but neither does it seem to contradict it: the upward momentum is common.

Milano , 1986

Running like a long white mark

Ivrea , 1985

The story of the show, part of the Storie per corse project, unfolds in a dense bamboo scenery that - in a wonderful and disturbing way - imprisons the images without ever rendering them entirely. 

The space of the stage is crossed by a luminous sign: a long path of horizontal monitors on which different tracks slide. On the screens develops the story of Orpheus, whose song had tamed gods, men, wild animals, things.

The pursuit of Eurydice, the descent into hell and finally the long white road that crosses the darkness, on his return from the underworld, appear . 

When Orpheus turns back to look at her as he leads her out of the underworld, the image vanishes from the scene. Orpheus's race is a metaphor for the race of man, always looking for an orientation in the labyrinth of the contemporary condition. 

Here, often, in the continuous movement it is necessary to ask what is the cause of the movement.

The stolen sign

Ivrea,1985

An incident, similar to a mythological evocation? Or an escape into fiction similar to that perpetrated by the character Icarus created by Raymond Queneau? 

In the park of the Villa Comunale in Taormina, in a circular space a cross like sign is discovered, made up of twenty four monitors.

Celestial trajectories

Ivrea,1985

Cavaillon (France), Center Culturel de Cavaillon, “L'amour de Berlin” exhibition

Part of an electronic sky, suspended above the heads of visitors, fell to the ground, trapping the image of a dove in the reflection of the polished floor. 

Above, on the monitors, the upside-down gaze of a Meteosat satellite travels and investigates the surface of the earth. The narration of Traiettorie Celesti is inspired by the title of the exhibition that hosted it: "L’amour de Berlin". 

The assonance with "le mur de Berlin" suggests a reflection on the Wall as a border that delimits areas of the world. Today the gazes of the satellites, the instantaneousness of the communications, the penetration of the frequencies would seem to cross all borders. 

But perhaps there are new barriers, invisible walls that increase divisions and protect privileges. Even the dove, chosen as a symbol for its freedom to establish trajectories that go beyond walls and borders, remains trapped in these nets.