The Quintessence is one of the winners of the seventh Italian Council call tendered by the Ministry of Culture Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity to promote Italian art in the world. The project, boasting an important international network of partners from Europe and the United States, has been put together by Kingston University, London, in partnership with FMAV Fondazione Modena Arti Visive, which will then buy the works produced for its collections.
The exhibition, curated by Daniele De Luigi, uses video, photography, archive material and site-specific installations to recount the places and laboratories where the fundamental laws of the universe, from the microcosm of quantum physics to the macrocosm of the multiverse, are studied. These centres, such as the Boulby Underground Laboratory, Paris Observatory and Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, house archives of images and data relating to the development of scientific research past and present. Moreover, they are the site of experiments that push the boundaries of our imagination to find an answer to some of the most complex questions concerning the structure of the universe.The Quintessence investigates the limits and conditioning of the human dynamics which lead to the theoretical development of physics and astrophysics, in the are a where the anthropocentric vision of reality rubs up against faith in the objectivity of scientific knowledge.
The project was made thanks to the support of the Ministry of Culture Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity’s seventh Italian Council (2019) international programme for the promotion of Italian art. In addition to FMAV, the partners involved in The Quintessence exhibition are:La Box/ENSA (Bourges, F), Fondation Boghossian (Brussels, BE), Max Planck Institute (Munich, DE), UCL Observatory (London, UK), MAMbo (Bologna, IT), Nottingham University – Nottingham Contemporary (UK) and Stanley Picker Gallery – Kingston University (London, UK).
