The exhibition “Slight Agitation 4/4: Laura Lima” opens tomorrow, June 15th 2018. It represents the fourth and final chapter of the project conceived by the Prada Foundation Thought Council, which once again has worked in collaboration with the Contec Group.

For this latest exhibition, Contec Ingegneria and Contec Industry have collaborated with the Foundation for the engineering support of the installations Telescope – vertical structure – and Pendulum – mechanism that reproduces the movement of the Foucault pendulum. A specific technical study has been necessary to set up the installations and express the profound meanings as interpreted by the artist Laura Lima, protagonist of this exhibition.

As reported by the note of the Prada Foundation, “Slight Agitation” is a project in four chapters that includes site-specific works commissioned for the occasion and exhibited in the Cisterna spaces inside the Milanese headquarters of Fondazione Prada. The protagonists of the first three chapters were Tobias Putrih (Slovenia, 1972), Pamela Rosenkranz (Switzerland, 1979) and the Austrian union Gelitin.

With the project “Horse Takes King” Laura Lima presents an eccentric experiment in which she tries to alter the senses that determine our perception, installing in the Cisterna spaces three large sculptures that constitute many expressions of a taxonomic system apparently absurd.
The title is a clear reference to the game of chess, able to create an illusory space in which the spectators can move freely, uninforned about the wider context that would explain the intent of the artist. The works on show, Bird (2016), Pendulum (2018) and Telescope (2018), invite the observer to elaborate what in astronomical terms is defined as “syzygy”, a straight line configuration of three celestial bodies in a gravitational system .

Pendulum (2018) is installed in the central hall of the Cistern; it is a mechanism that reproduces the movement of the Foucault pendulum, with a painting fixed at the end. The public is invited to make assumptions about the origin of the canvas.

In the space on the left there is Telescope (2018), a vertical installation that houses an astronomy classroom. The first level will be held every day at 12.30 and at 17.00 two astronomy seminars lasting half an hour, created by the scientists of LOfficina del Planetario, an association that deals with the planning of the Civic Planetarium in Milan. On the upper level, a telescope facing the sky is installed at a height of about 10 meters, accessible to the public under the guidance of an astronomer.

The space on the right of the Cisterna hosts Bird (2016), created in collaboration with the Brazilian artist Zé Carlos Garcia. The sculpture represents a huge animal that seems to have fallen from the sky into the exhibition space by chance.

The combination of these three works in the exhibition spaces questions the nature of the involvement of visitors in a space and in a place stimulating their perception: the artist explores the boundaries between image and reality to underline the poetic and absurd component, intrinsic to what it is real only in appearance.

Contec Ingegneria has already collaborated in the “Slight Agitation” project, during the first stage – 1/4 – technical support for the preparation was provided. Here the news: https://www.gruppocontec.it/slight-agitation-apre-a-milano/

CONTEC EXPERIENCES BETWEEN ART AND ENGINEERING: https://issuu.com/contec_ingegneria/docs/brochure_mostre_e_allestimenti_rev.