Arising from a moment as peculiar as the current one, the project L’orecchio di Dionisio evolved in an almost natural way; rather than an exhibition, it operates as a concrete and significant gesture at the center of which is the act of Listening. It aims to stand as a different presence within the ever-growing, accelerated proliferation of visual communication of these times, developing a “visibility of the invisible”.

This is a refounding act, a breath, a song to start anew from a unique moment perceived globally; an “offbeat” approach, an impulse to simplicity, a reflection upon which to rebuild.
The immediate reference is to the Ear of Dionysius, a real place in Syracuse. The cave recalls the shape of the ear and the empty gallery spaces recall those of a cave. Acoustics and sound are the elements that bind them together in this project.

L’orecchio di Dionisio becomes a voluntary “interference” within the collective and international “noise”; a possible soundscape where images are evoked by sound and therefore neither defined nor enclosed by their presence and insistence.

The three gallery spaces each present a sound work by three artists: Miroslaw Balka, Simone Forti, and Marcello Maloberti. Therefore, the project investigates a possible and temporary new way to present a different experience, all within the gallery space, convinced of its indispensability as a place, after the artist’s mental and physical study, in which the first “founding elements of Art” occur.

In via Stradella 7 Simone Forti is present with a sound recording from one of her performances, Face Tunes (1967) [10′ 15″]: the profiles of seven faces drawn on a large scroll unfold slowly from left to right, as if they were a “score”. The profiles were translated into sounds in real time through a slide whistle at the end of which was a rod. The performer, keeping the whistle parallel to the sheet, followed the profile of each face thus playing the instrument and creating the “composition”.

61 x 59 x 31 / Sereno è (2006/2017) by Miroslaw Balka becomes a declaration, a contradiction, a wish, a prediction, a hermetic poem. All this, and numerous other meanings, are released in the rhythmic intonation of the two words from Drupi’s song, performed by the singer.

With Cicerone (2018) [19′ 34″] Marcello Maloberti takes us back to the past at via Stradella 4, speaking about Lorenzo Lotto. The words we hear describe a fresco that is evoked within the empty exhibition space. The walls are “painted” by the colors of the voice of the guide of the Suardi Chapel in Trescore (Bergamo).