From 4 October to 24 November 2013 GAMeC – Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo is pleased to present The Celestial Path by Invernomuto, the winning project of the first MERU ART*SCIENCE AWARD, promoted in collaboration with the Fondazione MERU and the Associazione BergamoScienza to reward and support the work of an artist and aimed at underscoring the bond between art and science.

In July 2013 the jury, composed of Prof. Zaverio Ruggeri – Fondazione MERU, Alessandro Bettonagli – Associazione BergamoScienza and Giacinto Di Pietrantonio – Director of GAMeC, examined and appreciated all the projects presented by the candidates because of the quality of their artistic research, but chose the project by Invernomuto for its particular relevance with the theme of the award.

The Celestial Path is a single-channel video that follows two lines of research: on one side the figure of Emma Kunz and her discovery of the healing rock Aion A, on the other the multiverse theory, one of the most radical concepts to emerge from physics in the latest decades.

Emma Kunz is a researcher, naturalist, healer and artist who spent most of her life (1892–1963) in the German part of Switzerland. All her life she worked with the pendulum in the therapeutic field and she applied this technique at the act of drawing geometrical motifs on graph paper, in which boldness and colour stand for Kunz’s specific moods and world visions. This pictorial production aroused the interest of the art world, first of Harald Szeemann, and then through museums and international exhibitions such as the last Venice Biennale. In 1942 Kunz discovered the healing qualities of a rock mined in a grotto close to Würenlos, Switzerland, which she named Aion A. The rock is mined, cleaned, polished and reduced into very fine powder to be used for therapeutic applications.

The multiverse theory considers hypothetical sets of infinite or finite possible universes outside of our spacetime. This theory is often defined as a “limit to the imagination” because it is related to the most experimental physical applications: a very intriguing way of thinking for its expanded reality scenarios and its possible redefinition of the universe conception. There is a very short step between reality and fiction.

The Celestial Path tries to investigate what is buried behind our reality, a “hidden reality”, creating a bridge between the archaic and spiritual past of Emma Kunz and the present, which looks at the future of the most recent scientific discoveries. The video combines virtual tours in the Emma Kunz Grotto with the voice-over of Brian Greene, one of the most important scholars of multiverse theory.

The project is part of the programming of the 11th BergamoScienza, one of the most important international science festivals, scheduled this year from 5 to 20 October.

The awards ceremony and presentation of the Fondazione MERU – Fondazione Medolago-Ruggeri for biomedical research will be held at GAMeC’s Spazio ParolaImmagine on 5 October 2013 at 6.30 p.m. as part of the 9th Day of Contemporary Art, promoted by AMACI.

The work will enter GAMeC’s Permanent Collection and the archives of the Fondazione MERU and the Associazione BergamoScienza.

 

PARTICIPANTS IN THE FIRST EDITION

Along with INVERNOMUTO, proposed by Andrea Lissoni – curator at Hangar Bicocca in Milan, the competitors for the first MERU ART*SCIENCE AWARD were:

ANNA FRANCESCHINI
Proposed by Cecilia Canziani and Ilaria Gianni – Co-director of the Nomas Foundation, Rome

NICK LAESSING
Proposed by Elena Volpato – Curator and conservator of the GAM, Turin

DIEGO MARCON
Proposed by Daniela Zangrando – Curator and director of the journal L’Allocco

LUCA TREVISANI
Proposed by Luca Lo Pinto – Curator and editor-in-chief of Nero Magazine