Edoardo Tresoldi: Opera

Opera is the public art permanent installation on Reggio Calabria’s seafront, promoted and commissioned by the local Municipality and the Metropolitan City.

The installation was created to celebrate the contemplative relationship between place and human beings through the language of classical architecture and the transparency of the Absent Matter. The open wire-mesh structure offers a new monument fully crossable and accessible to locals and visitors alike.

Opera is a monument to contemplation through which the place further defines itself. Tresoldi plays with the grammar of classical architecture – as well as with the transparency of the wire mesh – to research new visual poetics in dialogue with the surroundings and the viewer. The pillars, Western cultural heritage’s founding archetypes, compose a courtly frame allowing for a further interpretation of the park.

The installation is also the physical outcome of Tresoldi’s reflections on architectural composition and decomposition. The dialogue between the installation and its location can be seen through the colonnade’s distribution, which intentionally does not match the park’s. Similar to a musical counter-melody, their overlapping suggests two different melodies played at the same time. Walking through the park, the visitor encounters harmonies and contrasts between the two architectural systems.