Gianni Moretti (CRF 2021) is part of a group exhibition, Poesia e Rivoluzione, at Galleria Giampaolo Abbondio in the Isola district of Milan. The exhibition presents the works of five Italian and international artists: Gianni Moretti, Marìa Magdalena Campos-Pons, Elena Bellantoni, Binta Diaw, and Massimo Uberti. Each artist is a spokesperson of political art expressed with the charm and delicacy of poetry. The exhibition will be on view until October 30th, 2021.
Gianni’s piece is Five thousand nine hundred and sixteen minutes to Orlando, a manual printing with movable type on 32 brass plates coupled and mounted in 16 rotating structures of painted aluminum. It is a work based in time: the time Orlando spent in prison in via Tasso in Rome in 1944, before being killed in the Fosse Ardeatine. The extended and interminable time spent in prison, which Orlando described in the notes he secretly wrote to his mother and hid in the collars of shirts sent for washing. The future time that he did not have the opportunity to live, in which he imagined himself as a doctor next to the girl he loved. Finally, the time Gianni wanted to dedicate to him right away, when he learned about Orlando’s history at the Diary Museum in Pieve Santo Stefano. Gianni spent 5916 minutes copying Orlando’s messages, letter by letter, on brass plates, trying to dedicate a fragment of the time that was taken from Orlando.
Gianni Moretti’s Five thousand nine hundred and sixteen minutes to Orlando tells of the revolution of the most frail and their courage to face life and others’ gaze in the most adverse conditions, while not becoming invisible to themselves and remaining united with the primary meaning of life: freedom.
For more details on the show, click here.