Installations — Jacopo Dotti

The work in question draws inspiration and reference first and foremost from a dreamlike vision of music, which is mythologically transfigured into the goddess Euterpe, the name of the work itself, and secondly, from the concept of revelation, of aletheia, one of the summa concepts of Martin Heidegger's thought. A celestial vision, at once ephemeral and profoundly intoxicating, sensual, like the music itself, which transforms into a floating Venus, in a horizontal position, supine and reaching, like the physical propagation of sound, towards infinity.

The goddess detaches herself from earthly immanence to attain knowledge, through a process of epistemology, transcendental ascension, revelation, and aletheia. It is the lifting of the very veil of Maya that makes reality real, not as ducks, but as it is. She symbolically reaches toward the light, toward enlightenment, toward the empyrean, through a Platonic Hyperuranion, from which, metaphysically, creation draws its vital source, the ability that brings humanity closest to God, and therefore to the creatio Ex Nili.

The artistic, historiographical, and morphological references to which the work refers are translated and consolidated in the scenography and content. From Antonio Canova's Cupid and Psyche, to Gian Lorenzo Bernini's Rape of Proserpina, the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, and Blessed Ludovica Albertoni, from Antonio da Correggio's Assumption of the Virgin, through Giorgio de Chirico's Muses and Mannequins, and finally to the work of Maurizio Cattelan.

Euterpe, as depicted in various iconographies, holds a flute in her hand, imbued with sensual and instrumental meaning, of creation and procreation. Simultaneously a source of life and an instrument of gestation, a primordial and ancestral genesis, a new birth, a new life, like the music created and composed with the same instrument, like the Muse, who inspires the artist to create something new.

The viewer is plunged into a dimension of complete ecstatic rapture, inducing a contemplative and simultaneously soothing detachment of the soul, savored as never before in listening to music. Reflection, the detachment from materialism, leads the viewer to a symbolic and spiritual elevation of art and soul, immersed in a process of self-knowledge and introspective self-analysis, which finds inspiration in the fleeting and instantaneous nature of sensory and emotional perception, and which culminates in the ultimate perception of the innate pleasure of observing and listening.

The work, consistent with its meaning, finds its perfect dimension and placement within the exhibition, in the space and physical environment of the building's stairwell, which echoes its meaning. Almost like an acoustic sounding board, the footsteps of those preparing to climb the stairs resonate and reverberate, metaphorically comparable to the steep and complex path of knowledge leading to enlightenment.

The resulting semantics finds concrete expression in the ascending thrust comparable to the artist's aura and generative impulse, which drives one to create. The Muse, in fact, is a source of inspiration and revelation, like music, which draws inspiration and asserts itself as essence, before the plaque commemorating Cesare Pollini and his immortal creative and inspiring spirit. It is only music, sound, and vibrations that allow us to invade space and discover not its limits, but its infinity and immortality in the form of art, in its most perfect and alchemical quest for knowledge and experience.