Bruno Di Bello: Fractals & Other

The Marconi Foundation presents the exhibition, Bruno Di Bello with a group of works created by the artist over the past five years. Displayed on the ground floor of the exhibition space will be a series of new works, studies and later variations of the five large triptychs executed in 2010 for the exhibition held at the Niteroi Contemporary Art Museum in Rio de Janeiro.

Digital abstractions, a group of works created by the artist over the past five years, represent a sort of profound renewal in relation to Bruno Di Bello’s artistic experiments of previous years and to the tradition of “off camera” photography.
They have come after a long period of reflection, during which the artist – who already in the late 1980s had pioneered the replacement of his darkroom with digital hardware and software – was able to devote himself to the study of the new technologies, and in particular to digital photography, which in the interim enabled him to become an expert in computerised image creation and processing techniques.

In these works, Di Bello creates a virtual universe derived from a mathematical model, but one in which he intervenes by deciding which variable to introduce into the automatic process of iconic generation and proliferation.

Having learned about the theories of mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot, in the 1990s the artist began to study fractal geometry. In the late 1970s, Mandelbrot conceived that forms found in nature and considered the result of chance (the beauty of orchids, the jaggedness of coastlines, the shape of clouds…) could be described by a geometry based on a mathematical calculation, and that similar forms could be recreated by means of a complex system of computer-solved equations.

Fractal mathematics and geometry have been applied in the most varied fields of knowledge: from mapping to forecasting stock market movements and from architectural design to astrophysics, but Di Bello recalled that in the history of art, whenever geometry changed, art and architecture changed too, and that since the 1950s musicians have been using electronic instruments for their compositions, and that since the 1970s, architects have replaced the drawing board and pencil with computers. Many years ago, even Paul Klee – a constant reference point for Di Bello – researched the relationship between geometry and nature’s forms through various experiments and exercises in the lessons he taught at the Bauhaus).