TORNO INDIETRO UN ATTIMO 2024
“Rivers have their own motivations” Rombo, Esther Kinksy
Torno indietro un attimo is a project conceived by artist Antonio Rovaldi on the Adige River as part of FLUX – River Interventions and Explorations. During multiple excursions between summer and autumn 2023, Rovaldi meticulously traversed the river at a deliberate walking pace, charting a movement that encompasses stratifications, sedimentations, and erosions.
The culmination of this journey is a photographic series on film, where the perspectives of the landscape oscillate between verticality and horizontality. These images capture the river from various angles, seeking traces in the sand, along the banks, and among the rocks, while observing the passage of time. The project has been developed into an exhibition and a book, and it will spread across the city in the public space of billboards, bringing distant river imagery from the artist’s other photographic projects to Bolzano. Furthermore, the project encompasses two events organized in collaboration with its partners.
The photographic series is displayed in the exhibition with thirty-seven prints and a broad collection of slides. Torno indietro un attimo is a non-linear photographic sequence, weaving together a plurality of perspectives in conjunction with places, personal memories, geological eras, and encounters with inhabitants living in different geographical areas: from the mountain landscapes of the source on the border between Italy and Austria, to the extensive Venetian plain where the light warms and the river’s line flattens out, moving gently through its bends until it reaches the vastness of the horizon in the Adriatic Sea.
Antonio Rovaldi tells an extensive and elastic geography composed of landscapes that multiply, intertwine, and reflect through a narrative of contaminations among different places and epochs. Throughout the year, the artist has returned multiple times along the riverbanks, moving with or against the current to explore the margin of human activity in a territory deeply marked and constructed.
Complementing the photographic series, the exhibition also includes a sound installation titled Ludwig and the video 20” fermo davanti o di fianco al fiume inspiro schiena dritta braccia tese Adige 2023-24.
Torno indietro un attimo, wall posters, 200x300 cm, 2024
Torno indietro un attimo (from the series), 180 slides, wall projection, pre-spaced text, variable dimensions, 2024
Views of the installation at Foto Forum, Bolzano
Ludwig, Sound Installation, 24’ Loop, Two Speakers, Audio Mixer, 2024 (with Tommaso Zerbini)
Torno indietro un attimo (from the series), 38 color print on alluminium, 49,5 x 61,5 x 4 cm (17 pieces), 42 x 31 x 4 cm (17 pieces), 38,5 x 28,5 x 4 cm (1 piece) , framed, 2024
Torno indietro un attimo (from the series)
Torno indietro un attimo (from the series)
20” fermo davanti al fiume inspiro schiena dritta braccia tese, Adige 2023-2024, 13”, color, sound, 2024
In June 2024 Torno indietro un attimo will spread across the city in the public space of billboards, bringing distant river imagery from the artist’s other photographic projects to Bolzano.
The project Torno indietro un attimo is supported by Strategia Fotografia 2023, promoted by Directorate- General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture and co-financed by Autonomous Province of Bolzano/Bozen – South Tyrol and City of Bolzano. The project is produced by Foto Forum and Lungomare and staged in collaboration with NICHE, University Ca’ Foscari in Venice. The photographic series will become part of the collection of Museion – Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Bozen/Bolzano.