The title of the exhibition Il flauto greco – open from 12 September at the Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan – already evokes an ancestral atmosphere. A melody, the one played by the flute, that accompanies us in the exhibition realised by the artist Kevin Niggeler and the author Rosso Rota. This is an independent art exhibition featuring ten etchings made using the etching technique, conceived from the vibrations of Rosso’s poems. Greece and its uncertain sea, an expanse of salt that holds the history of mankind, is perceived in the element of water evoked first by the poems L’Onda and La pioggia then by the two corresponding engravings. Rosso Rota speaks of a wave of secrets and of rain as his greatest love. Kevin Niggeler translates this softness into images, creating a strong link between sign and word. An exhibition in which it is nature that speaks to us through two different gazes, distant in time and space, but which here find their fulfilment.
“In Xenia I want to see la Pluie”
ti avevo detto, e invece la pioggia non si è vista.
Altri Semidei ho incontrato,
ma non lei.
Poi, nel ritorno verso casa,
quasi battente è venuta a prendermi.
Lei, il mio amore grande.
Also a short film by PAMP
The spaces of Alveare Culturale will also host on the opening day a short film edited by the creative studio PAMP. Il flauto greco, curated by Giulia Ferrara, is visually layered with a video that clearly evokes the natural environment of the Greek islands from the perspective of Rosso’s intimate relationship with them. This video and Kevin Niggeler’s works thus become part of Rosso Rota’s own journey to the Greek islands of Gavdos and Kasos, in a constant dialogue between thought and action, the abstract and the concrete.
Behind the engravings of Kevin Niggeler
‘They are neither illustrations nor prints,’ explains artist Kevin Niggeler from Bergamo, telling us more about these unpublished works. ‘The etching technique was an opportunity for me to focus on its conceptual matrix, especially starting from Rosso’s poems. When I worked on the different elements of the composition, it was clear there was a lot of the natural elements. The hollowing out of the lines of force looks at hard objects like stone for example, but also the softness of liquids, so water, the cloud, all always with sharp, clean lines despite their fluidity’. The whole creative process behind this technique is revealed by Martina Marzola’s analogue photographs, while in the exhibition a glimpse ‘behind’ is offered by the zinc matrices, which are present in the exhibition together with other objects that can tell the development of the visual compositions.
Della durata e dello sguardo non si cura l’Onda quando in una insufficienza di secondi
si trasforma in assemblea di segreti.
Dal fianco offesa, per scelta o per natura
s’apre al sole
come un’ ostrica dischiudendo la sua rivelazione.
Muto in quel momento s’alza il velo
penetra l’immagine
poi, la spuma
improvviso sipario
niente più fondale.
Courtesy Kevin Niggeler, Rosso Rota, ph Martina Marzola
