Rä di Martino: The Day He Swims thru Marrakech

The Italian artist’s first solo show in Milan displays various sculptures and photography, visualising the artists exploration of the fertile territory shared by these two media. They are seemingly separated by oppositions such as stillness/movement, material/immaterial, second/third dimension. However, the artist digs beyond these contrasts and investigates tensions between backstage and film footage, raw material and its editing, protagonist and body double, reality and fiction, original and cover – all referring to the relation between photography and sculpture.

These hybrid objects refocus the attention on the making of the image, on cinema in cinema, and on the analysis of the film devices themselves that make it possible to construct new meanings of history. Cinema as sculpture is a historically complex theme that has emerged as a central focus in the research of this artist in recent years.

Numerous works show springs from her first feature-length film “La controfigura, 2017”, which she uses as a narrative source for photographies and sculptures. The film is based on the feature film The Swimmer from 1964, starring Burt Lancaster. Di Martina ha however re-enacted the movie and reconfigured to her own version of the story in an equally metaphysical Marrakech, a contradictory city, ancient and modern, true and false, and a reflection of a bourgeoisie in search of new motivations.