NEW YORK, NY.- Newman Popiashvili Gallery presents the first solo exhibition in New York of Italian artist, Alberto Tadiello. Titled "Variable Intensity Rain Gradient Aloft" (Virga), the exhibition includes three kinetic sculptures and a group of four drawings.
In meteorology, the term virga references a phenomenon in which precipitation falls from the clouds but evaporates before reaching the ground. Acted upon by fluctuations in pressure and temperature, the precipitation undergoes a change of state that symbolizes the perpetual flux inherent in nature. Drawing on these observations of nature as inspiration, Tadiello incorporates his interest in transformative processes and ephemerality into an industrial visual vocabulary that also references the scientific classifications that we impose upon naturally occurring events.
The three kinetic sculptures exhibited here are individually titled K1, K2 and K3. Although the title does not have any specific point of reference, the arbitrary selection of the letter K is intended to evoke the dryness of code and methodologies. Composed of iron bars, motors, cables and metal brackets, the sculptures appear like linear drawings in space, maintaining a simple and direct level of visual legibility, but offer an evocative physical presence. When switched on, the sculptures function on a different level: motors activate black cables connected to various arrangements of pulleys, creating noise and movement within the gallery space.
The murmur of the motor and the noise of the friction created at the points of contact between the plastic materials and the iron elements result in a sound neither changed nor amplified by the artist. With no specific function, each sculpture is an autonomous closed system persevering in its own right. It's an insistence, a resistance, a tension kept continuously, the constant movement of which brings to mind issues of physical wear, malfunction and inevitable demise. Machine-made according to a pattern, the drawings offer an extension of the ideas presented in the sculptures themselves.
The poetic ephemerality of the kinetic sculptures is transcribed through the mechanical dynamics of activation and deactivation of the physical and auditory space. Deprived of their causal functions, the machines are brought into the realm of subtle, yet apparent tension.
Based in Venice, Alberto Tadiello was honored with the FURLA Award in 2009 and recently completed a Gasworks Residency in London. Tadiello was also awarded the Trieste Contemporanea Emerging European Artist Award in 2008. His recent exhibitions include Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory at T293 Gallery in Naples (2008), the Torino Triennale d'Arte Contemporanea (2008) and Science versus Fiction, Betonsalon Centre d'art et de recherche, Paris (2009).
