Pablo Bronstein brings dance, architecture and zoetropes to Venice

Curated by Catherine Wood and in collaboration with the choreographer Rosalie Wahlfrid, the Argentine artist stages Carousel de Crystal at the OGR in Turin and at Ospedaletto in Venice.

Pablo Bronstein, OGR Torino, 2019. Foto Andrea Rossetti

One of the most surprising elements of the videos, performances and choreographies by Pablo Bronstein is his capacity to create a space from the minutiae of architectural design and use symbology to speak through body language of the voyeurism, narcissism, value, and political and economic effects of architecture itself.

Born in Buenos Aires in 1977 and brought up in London, the artist – who is often the performer in his works – moves between the figure of a late-eighteenth-century learned connoisseur and that of a radical visionary. With sophisticated skill, he combines fragments of the Baroque and Post-Modern (his A Guide to Post-Modern Architecture in London, 2008, is beautiful and still topical), which are ultimately both movements in the history of architecture characterised by ideas of triumph, void, glamour, finance, movement and ruin.

Every project is the result of a long process of analysis and study of space, through the production of watercolour and ink drawings from which the sets take shape. Bronstein thus carries forward his meticulous study into the relationship between the body and space, combining with skilful nonchalance the history of dance and that of architecture.

This is also the case at the OGR in Turin, where the artist presents Carousel de Crystal, his new work curated by Catherine Wood and created in collaboration with the choreographer Rosalie Wahlfrid. This time the cue is an optical device, the zoetrope, created in 1834 by the English mathematician William George Horner. In simple terms, the device is a primitive system for the viewing of moving images reproduced on a strip of paper placed inside a drum which, when set in motion, are animated, reproducing the illusion of movement as in a spinning carousel.

Pablo Bronstein, Grey Witch, OGR Turin, 2019. Photo Andrea Rossetti
Pablo Bronstein, Grey Witch, OGR Turin, 2019. Photo Andrea Rossetti

Bronstein uses looped movements, optical illusion and the dynamics of watching and being watched to create a large-scale setting within the space of Binario 1 at the ex-workshop in Turin, where choreography, dance, architecture, design and moving images come together. The project will also continue in Venice, as part of the 58th International Art Exhibition where, again under the direction of the Turin institution, Bronstein presents a second act to the work, this time set in the Music Hall of the Ospedaletto Complex in Venice (inauguration 8 May).

Performance:
Carousel de Crystal
Artist:
Pablo Bronstein
Turin:
until 9 June 2019
Location:
Binario 1, OGR – Officine Grandi Riparazioni
Address:
corso Castelfidardo 22, Turin, Italy
Venice:
8 – 12 May 2019
Event:
58th International Art Exhibition, Venice Biennale
Location:
Sala della Musica, Ospedaletto
Address:
Barbaria delle Tole, 6691, Venice

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