Futile Cycles: Gaggini (2015) Three channels videoprojection cm 180×700
Futile Cycles: Gaggini (2015) Historical iconographic documents accompanied by artist’s texts
Gaggini. Le Alpi e il Tropico del Cancro (2017) Artist’s book pp. 192
Palermo, Sull’orlo del vuoto come di un fiordo, curated by Cristina Costanzo, Église, February 2024
Palermo, Sull’orlo del vuoto come di un fiordo, curated by Cristina Costanzo, Église, February 2024
Genoa, Futile Cycles: Gaggini, curated by Raffaele Gavarro, Contemporary Art Museum of Villa Croce, October 2015
Genoa, Futile Cycles: Gaggini, curated by Raffaele Gavarro, Contemporary Art Museum of Villa Croce, October 2015
Genoa, Futile Cycles: Gaggini, curated by Raffaele Gavarro, Contemporary Art Museum of Villa Croce, October 2015
Salza di Pinerolo, Book presentation, La Friulana, September 2018
Jesi, Gaggini. Le Alpi e il Tropico del Cancro, Book presentation with Luca Butini, Planettiana Civic Library, April 2018
Trinidad de Cuba, Book presentation, Municipal Historical Archive, February 2018 (photo by Piero Ottaviano)
Torino, Gaggini. Le Alpi e il Tropico del Cancro, Book presentation with Marco Bussone, Pinacoteca Albertina, January 2018
Genoa, Futile Cycles: Gaggini, Set up of the exhibition, September 2015
Genoa, Futile Cycles: Gaggini, Set up of the exhibition, September 2015
Genoa, Futile Cycles: Gaggini, Set up of the exhibition, September 2015
Pancalieri, Set up of the video installation, September 2015
Pancalieri, Set up of the video installation, September 2015
Trinidad de Cuba, Historical research task, Municipal Historical Archive, February 2014
Havana, Photo shooting session, February 2014
Prali, Roccabianca marble quarry, July 2012
Futile Cycles: Gaggini combines the image and story of a white marble quarry in the Alps, abandoned about a hundred years ago, with the image and story of a neoclassical fountain in the city of Havana.
The art project consists of a multimedia installation, a collection of historical-iconographic documents and an artist’s book that is, at the same time, a historical essay.
Futile Cycles Gaggini is a project whose realisation was quite long and complex, but which basically responded to the simple desire to share a state of wonder. I refer to the amazement I felt in 2007, while in Havana, upon discovering that in the square next to the Capitolio was a large fountain attributed to Gaggini. When I was a student in Architecture, I had researched the ancient marble quarries of Piedmont, and was eventually able to visit some of them, including Roccabianca, where Gaggini’s signature stands out clearly on the marble.
So, back from Cuba, I wrote a first draft, which I sent to a foreign institution, without receiving a response. Several years passed before I decided to rethink it. It happened in conversation with Luigi Fassi, who had joined me in Ancona when I was almost closing the exhibition Vertigo of Reality. A nod of curiosity from him was enough to revive me, to get me to restart a process that had stopped when, evidently, the time was not ripe. That same year I launched a crowdfunding campaign and laid the groundwork for a work that would absorb me for five whole years.
© Cristiano Berti
2024
Fare arte è un modo per approcciare la complessità del mondo sensibile, un modo che facendo apertamente ricorso ai sensi dichiara di voler «sentire», e di qui trae per una parte la sua catturante disposizione ad essere continuamente e diversamente interpretato. Dedicandomi a Giuseppe Gaggini ho fatalmente scoperto le tante figure di contorno alle due vicende della cava e della fontana. Le ramificazioni di altre storie, che si innestavano sulle due storie principali, hanno poi composto qualcosa di indescrivibile, per la quantità di notizie e misteri, di possibili associazioni e congetture. Chi cercasse di descrivere un prato si troverebbe in una difficoltà analoga.
Addentratomi nel prato delle congetture e dei misteri, ho dovuto resistere alla tentazione di riaprire col mio passo ognuna delle tracce impresse da questi nostri lontani amici. Ho lasciato a riposare nell’ombra la storia di Bernardo Gozo, che forse da indipendentista pentito si trova a scortare la statua colossale del re tiranno da poco defunto. Altre figure e situazioni hanno esercitato sulla mia fantasia un’azione più profonda e duratura.
Continuo con la mia metafora del prato. In fondo il prato non ha niente di speciale. Tutti ne abbiamo attraversati a decine, osservando con attenzione o gettando appena uno sguardo. Nondimeno continuiamo ad attraversare prati, e con un certo piacere. Senza prati saremmo più poveri. Non è dunque il coacervo di storie che ho indagato e raccontato, ad essere futile. Anche le figure meno rilevanti o di cui meno si sa, non solo Gaggini che è stato scultore di una certa fama, possono rivelarsi interessantissime. La futilità sta nel nucleo concettuale di questo mio lavoro d’artista, nel porre cioè una spiacevole premessa negativa all’interrogarsi sul senso di fare arte, storia, cultura, oggi.
© Cristiano Berti
excerpt from Gavarro, Raffaele and Cristiano Berti, «Il banale e il significativo nell’arte d’oggi», in Cristiano Berti, Gaggini. Le Alpi e il Tropico del Cancro, Macerata: Quodlibet (ISBN 978-88-229-0129-3), 2017, pp. 178 – 179
The quarry of Roccabianca is located at an altitude of 2100 meters in the Germanasca Valley, not far from Turin. After having been cultivated discontinuously since the 16th century, it has been in a state of abandonment for about a hundred years. Its last heyday was in the first half of the 19th century, when the quarry, along with other marble quarries in the surrounding area also owned by the state, were given in concession to the Genoese sculptor Giuseppe Gaggini (1791-1867).
The Fuente de la India is a fountain located in today’s Parque de la Fraternidad, in Havana. It was commissioned by the Superintendence of Finance of the Island of Cuba, along with another smaller fountain called Fuente de los Leones, to adorn the new public aqueduct. These fountains, made of Carrara marble by Giuseppe Gaggini, are among the city’s most famous monuments, and the Fuente de la India was long a symbol of the Cuban capital.
In addition to the figure of the sculptor and the type of material (white marble), uniting the two places is the duration of years. The events of the artistic commission and the concession of the quarries, in both cases, were initiated in 1834 and concluded in 1836.
The installation is a three-channel video projection coordinated in order to present a single image. The video is based on two panoramic photographs showing the landscapes of Roccabianca and the Parque de la Fraternidad. To be projected first is the image of the marble quarry, with the surrounding alpine landscape. A slow process of zooming in expands the image by directing the viewer’s gaze toward the quarry wall until the signature engraved with a chisel by Gaggini appears, clearly visible. Once the zooming in stops, there is a video transition that ends by showing a view of a lion mask on a marble wall. The start of the zoom-out process allows us to understand that we are at the base of the fountain, and as the view widens the viewer can see the monumental fountain and the surrounding cityscape in full. At the end of this zooming out process another cross-fade starts, leading to the panoramic view of the alpine landscape. From here the zoom-in movement already described resumes. The sounding of the images accentuates the immersive effect of the installation.
Gaggini. Le Alpi e il Tropico del Cancro [Gaggini: The Alps and the Tropic of Cancer] was published by Quodlibet in 2017. The book consists of a prologue and seven chapters followed by an extensive section of documentary sources. It closes with a dialogue between the author and art critic and author Raffaele Gavarro.
Futile Cycles: Gaggini (2015-2017): Video installation, eleven historical documents accompanied by artist’s texts and an artist’s book
Three channels videoprojection, cm 180×700
Original documents: Carta topografica del Regno d’Italia, folio 67, Pinerolo: Istituto Geografico Militare, 1895 (canvas backed map), cm 61×60; Angelo Bruneri, L’Accademia Albertina di Belle Arti ed il marchese di Breme, Turin, 1856 (brochure); William Henry Bartlett, Pomaret, and Prali, Steel engraving prints taken from William Beattie, The Waldenses or Protestant valleys of Piedmont, Dauphiny, and The Ban de la Roche, London, 1838; Louis Courajod, I Gaggini da Bissone all’estero, Milano, 1906 (brochure); Thomas Abiel Prior, Bissone, Lake Lugano, Italy, Steel engraving print taken from the 1st tome of George Newenham Wright, The Rhine, Italy and Greece, in a Series of Drawings from Nature, London, 1841; Habana, City map taken from Karl Baedeker, The United States with excursions to Mexico, Cuba, Porto Rico, and Alaska, 4th edition, London, 1909; Habana. Fuente de la India. India Monument, Postcard, 1914; Karl Girardet, Une Volante, à la Havane, print taken from Le Magasin pittoresque, directed by Édouard Charton, XXIV, Paris, 1856; Pantographe, Copper etching print taken from the 1st tome of Dictionnaire Technologique ou Nouveau Dictionnaire Universel des Arts et Métiers et de l’Économie Industrielle et Commerciale, Paris, 1835. Estación de Villanueva, hoy Capitolio, Photography, circa 1915, variable dimensions (all framed cm 40×40).
Book (paperback with flaps): Gaggini. Le Alpi e il Tropico del Cancro, including a conversation with Raffaele Gavarro, Macerata: Quodlibet (ISBN 978-88-229-0129-3), 2017, pp. 192
Visual artwork realization:
Photography and editing by Piero Ottaviano
Programming by Rajan Craveri
Historical investigation collaborators: Ada Almeira Bravo and Roberto Díaz Martín
Acknowledgements:
The ninety people from Italy, Canada, Israel, France, the United Kingdom, and Slovakia who participated in the crowdfunding campaign to produce this work (2013)
altroQuale, Jesi and Municipality of Jesi, Italy
2015
Futile Cycles: Gaggini, curated by Raffaele Gavarro, Contemporary Art Museum of Villa Croce, Genoa, Italy
2024
Sull’orlo del vuoto come di un fiordo, curated by Cristina Costanzo, Église, Palermo, Italy
2018
Gaggini. Le Alpi e il Tropico del Cancro, book presentation (September 8), La Friulana, Salza di Pinerolo, Italy
Gaggini. Le Alpi e il Tropico del Cancro, book presentation (April 27) with Luca Butini, Planettiana Civic Library, Jesi, Italy
Gaggini. Le Alpi e il Tropico del Cancro, book presentation (April 7) with Giuliana Carbi, Trieste Contemporanea/Studio Tommaseo, Trieste, Italy
Gaggini. Le Alpi e il Tropico del Cancro, book presentation (February 7), Municipal Historical Archive, Trinidad, Cuba
Gaggini. Le Alpi e il Tropico del Cancro, book presentation (January 18) with Marco Bussone, Pinacoteca Albertina, Turin, Italy
2017
Gaggini. Le Alpi e il Tropico del Cancro, book presentation (December 19) with Valerio Cuccaroni, Francesco Podesti Civic Art Gallery, Ancona, Italy
Gaggini. Le Alpi e il Tropico del Cancro, book launch (December 7) with Adelmo Taddei, Sant’Agostino Museum, Genoa, Italy
2015
Giuseppe Gaggini tra le Alpi e il Tropico del Cancro, artist talk (January 17), Piedmontese Society of Archeology and Fine Arts – SPABA, Turin, Italy
2019
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2018
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2017
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2015
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2013
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