Bianco-Valente, 'Tempo universale', details from exhibition, 2007.
The predominant themes in Naples-based artist duo Bianco-Valente's artistic manifesto is the duality between the mind and the body and the relationship between nature and artifice, themes which they explore through a very personal exploration of a little-known 17th century theory of humanity's cosmic possibility. But the images they produce - of ethereal computer-generated and optically manipulated spectrum waves, delicately alternating tree patterns and moving clouds (as I had the pleasure to see screened over the Palazzo Poggi's cabinet of fossilised curiosities a few months ago), among other subjects - don't give any of this away straight away.
Their works have a very primal, scientific look to them - you could think they are primary documentation compiled by someone fascinated by the processes of natural history, proof of different qualities among the elements, a scrapbook on the idea of how something as basic as light affects our perception of life, etc. This, actually, is not very far from the origin of their conception. Working together since 1995, Giovanna Bianco and Pino Valente's artistic aim after 2001 has been to 'verify' the effects postulated by an ancient astronomical/astrological theory (around 1650 there wasn't any distinction between the two disciplines), according to which every living being can control - whether this mean accelerate or prevent - a cycle of cosmic tendencies by visiting pre-determinable places in the world on the day of their astronomic birthday.
This theory, which for lack of cheap flights among other things could not really set to the test back in mediaeval times, was resuscitated in the 70s by an Italian researcher, whose contributions to his subject included the development of a complex geo-astronomical software programme by which anyone may trace their spatial, bio-cosmic coordinate chart. In their quest to validate and enjoy the potential of the obscure treatise, Bianco-Valente have already travelled to Brasil, India, Siberia, Yucatan, Singapore, and many other places, landing almost always far from places favoured by the tourism industry. Once they've reached their separate destinations, they make a work inspired by what they felt at that moment, in that place, when pre-determined processes are observed, frozen, in the subject's control.
'To travel, above all in non-touristy places, and to have the chance to meet with people who conceive of time and existence in a way entirely different from your own, is an incredibly profound experience. The mother of all disciplines'. Whether the theory really did exist or is simply a placebo-like confection is not of the essence here; the artists' original reflections on the incomprehensible nature of the relationship between the past, the present and the future stand as question mark of all that is at once material and spiritual, a scrapbook composed of art questioning what drives us to make, what inspires us to believe.
Lupe Nunez-Fernandez
BIANCO-VALENTE, 'TEMPO UNIVERSALE'
To 10 May 2007
Galleria Enrico Fornello
Via Paolini, 27
59100 Prato, Italy
T:+39 0574 462719
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