ABOUT THE CYCLE TERRA MORALE - MALEBOLGE AND THE EXHIBITION AT THE NETHERLANDS MEDIA ART INSTITUTE MONTEVIDEO/TBA, AMSTERDAM (2000)

Once someone set about the task of making a drawing of the world. Over the course of many years he populated a space with depictions of provinces, nations, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fish, houses, instruments, stars, horses and people. Shortly before he died, he discovered that this patient labyrinth of lines was a depiction of his own face.
(Jorge Luis Borges)

In 1985 I began making five paintings involving the seven circles of hell in Dante's Inferno, the region where those guilty of violence, dissipation, fanaticism and usury undergo their punishment. These paintings form the basis of Terra Morale, a cycle of video works. All of the installations shown can be considered as a paysage moralisé. Both their form and content is inspired by classical litera­ture (Dante, Virgil, Vitruvius, Hesiod). In this literature 'the heavens and the earth, the sea and the wind, lightning and volcanos are constantly used as symbols for developments in and around the inner life of the characters, and for the spiritual, cosmological and political abstractions that are being unfolded.' (Victor Pöschl). For that reason, landscapes and elements of nature play an important role in my video works. But Panofsky and modern writers including Borges, Gombrowisz, Conolly and Lautréamont have also had influence on my work. I combines music sound and comtem­porary television material with my work.
The exhibition Terra Morale comprises six video installations, four of which from the period 1987-1992, and two new installations. On the ground floor Malebolge (1999), on the first floor Bulicame (1987-88) and Vulcano Eolico (1991-1992) and on the second floor Palinuro (1989), Miseno (1990) and Nox Umida (1999).

(ndk/mi/nmai 2000)

EXHIBITED WORKS

1. Bulicame (1987/88) ‘a rivulet whose blood-red colour makes my flesh still creep’

2. Palinuro (1989) 'to you he went carrying to you a sombre dream'

3. Miseno (1990) 'and drowned the fool where the water foams among the rocks'

4. Vulcano Eolico (1991/92) ‘an island rises steeply on spray-steaming rocksd’

5. Nox Umida (1999) 'those who sail are buried'

6. Malebolge (1999) ‘a place made up of stone, and the colour of iron’

THE DIVISION OF THE FIVE WORKS INTO THREE LEVELS

from up to down:

SECOND FLOOR
Gallery 3  Palinuro  -  corridor  Miseno  -  small hall  Nox Umida

FIRST FLOOR
Gallery 2  Bulicame en Vulcano Eolico

GROUND FLOOR
Gallery 1  Malebolge