Living between Rome and Umbria, the italian artist Marco Tirelli arrays within the scope of his eyes images of distinct temporalities: ruins and modernity, mysticism and connection, living together. In “Theater of Memory” — a major installation by the artist in the Venice Biennale 2013 — this particular universe, made up of drawings, paintings, and sculptures, was displayed in a babel of signs that created an alphabet of its own. Spectators were invited to walk through, enjoy and receive unto themselves a sensory assimilation.

Provocative. Complex forms, like parts of the human body or landscapes, attained the same visual weight as simple, geometric, almost abstract forms. That is, the whole display had the same weight, as if we were in a universe where the hierarchy of meanings had been abstracted forever after.

 

This book is an evolution of “Theater of Memory” in thirty-three images that, separately, make up a mosaic similar to the large exhibit in Venice. Thirty-two works have been realized with fine art quality, accompanied by an original drawing, which gives a unique character to each copy. The coherence of the volume is neither formal nor logical and, in a sense, it is almost random, like the meanings of the three lasercut symbols used as graphic details. The eye’s path takes in the environment as a whole, which remains open to each person’s sensibility: minute objects may move in erratic trajectories; others are satisfied to have been withdrawn from their eternity, since they have acquired a visible form and body.

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