Andrea Galvani: La sottigliezza delle cose elevate

The research of Andrea Galvani (Verona, Italy 1973, he lives and works in New York and Mexico City) coalesces around history’s biggest questions—investigations nurtured by social, educational, political, ideological, technological, and scientific transformations that continue to change the conditions of our daily lives, inescapably and oftentimes invisibly.

Andrea Galvani’s project entitled La sottigliezza delle cose elevate (The Subtleties of Elevated Things) kicks off a three-year program called Dispositivi sensibili (Sensitive Devices) conceived by Angel Moya Garcia, the new Head of Cultural Programming of Pavilion 9b at the Mattatoio, a space for research and production focusing on the convergence of methods, aesthetics and the practice in visual and performing arts run by the Azienda Speciale Palaexpo in Rome.

This interdisciplinary project was designed as an open laboratory, an experiential environment in constant and continuous evolution. Through a series of architectural installations, actions, and performance specifically developed for the space, Galvani focuses our attention on the human need to measure, decipher, and understand the unknown, to give shape and direction to the abstract.

The exhibition’s title is adapted from the grimoire Shams al-Ma’arif wa Lata’if al-‘Awarif (The Book of the Sun of Gnosis and the Subtleties of Elevated Things) written by Ahmad ibn ‘Ali al-Buni before his death in 1225 CE. The book is generally understood as the most influential text of its kind in the Arab world, opening with a series of complex magic squares that demonstrate hidden relationships between numbers and geometrical forms. It was written at a time when science, mathematics, and magic were intricately intertwined.

La sottigliezza delle cose elevate embraces this visionary, pioneering and trans-disciplinary approach that the scientific research process has embodied from its earliest days, dwelling in particular on its emotional, spiritual and metaphysical aspects.

Upon entering the space, visitors encounter The Subtleties of Elevated Things, a live performance produced in collaboration with researchers from the Sapienza University of Rome, CERN, and Virgo Data Analysis Group. Galvani has invited a group of students, graduates, and research fellows across different scientific disciplines to develop complex analyses and calculations on-site. Through intensive daily intervention, the space becomes an athenaeum for the duration of the show.

The architecture of the entire pavilion will gradually transform into a manifold numerical fabric. The raw process of computation and analysis—the uncertainty, the mistakes, the physical and intellectual effort of continuous numerical elaboration, developed by researchers working live on the walls of the exhibition space—becomes the very center of the action. It exposes what is normally hidden from us: human presence, its triumph and fragility, the desire to understand, to solve mysteries, the emotional, psychological and behavioral architecture that constitutes the engine of learning.

The epicenter in this galaxy of happenings is a monumental installation entitled Instruments for Inquiring into the Wind and the Shaking Earth, an intricate series of neon sculptures which take shape as mathematical equations that have revolutionized our understanding of reality: from Einstein’s theory of general relativity to Newton’s famous Calculus equation; from the Doppler Effect to Friedmann’s equations which describe the evolution of time and geometry of the universe; from electromagnetic radiation defined by Planck to the quantum gravity of Wheeler-deWitt, and the extraordinary Noether’s Theorem.

Mathematical equations precisely describe the symmetry of physical laws: from the undulating movement of waves, to the nature of time; the generation of a lightning storm, to the regulation of ocean tides; the rate at which the cosmos expands, and the possibility of life on other planets.

At certain moments over the course of the exhibition, a group of vocalists and performers transform the space into an immersive kinetic theater. The action expands, becomes a soundscape, an experiential orchestra of audio-visual stimuli that moves and pulses through space, texturizing it, interacting with the architecture, the work, and the public.

La sottigliezza delle cose elevate also features guided walk-throughs in Attraversamenti, the public programming series taking place throughout September and October thanks to the researchers collaborating on the ongoing cross-disciplinary project The Subtleties of Elevated Things.

Andrea Galvani’s entire oeuvre honors the power of human knowledge—the desire to understand the mysterious, to regulate the abstract—while simultaneously emphasizing its limits, circumscribing a perimeter of action that moves forward, able to appear and generate itself from its own impossibility.