Matteo NASINI - Screwed Harmonies, 2020

Matteo NASINI

Born in 1976 in Rome, lives and works in Rome (Italy)

Matteo Nasini's artistic research work starts from the study of sounds and evolves towards physical forms, through an in-depth study and observation of the surface of plastic materials and sounds. This leads to a practice that methodologically translates into sound installations of performances, audiovisual or sculptural works. His creations have been exhibited in the following places: Centro Arti Visive Pescheria (Pesaro); Clima Gallery, Marsèlleria, Fluxia, Fonderia Artistica Battaglia (Milan); Maxxi, Macro, Nomas Foundation, Operativa Arte, La Galleria Nazionale, Pastificio Cerere, Auditorium Parco della Musica, American Academy (Rome); Villa Croce (Genoa) ; Villa Romana (Florence); Museo delle Palme (Palermo); Palazzo Fortuny (Venice); Riserva Naturale Lago di Vico (Viterbo); Art O Rama (Marseille); Paris La Défense (Paris); La Panacée (Montpellier); RMCA (Serignan); IIC, Hammer Museum (Los Angeles); Marsèlleria (New York); Rowing (London).

The work for La Seine Musicale

Music doesn't describe. It suggests: moods, abstract ideas. Music is in relation with matter: it bends the air, makes bodies vibrate. Music is not human. Even better: it is not only human. What happens if there is no composer, if there are no musicians? Where is the music if the room is empty?

On the forecourt of the Seine Musicale, almost three meters of sound sculpture choose the wind as the only conductor. The wind turns the propeller at the top of the structure and generates the movement of the spheres; they descend at the bottom and rise at the top in a continuous movement that echoes Leonardo da Vinci's infinite screw. Along the way, the spheres strike tuned pipes, giving rise to slow, deep sounds that evoke the sound of bells. This is Screwed Harmonies: a wind percussion organ. The sculpture gives rise to a movement without origins, without end; it is the implementation of a circular, potentially infinite temporal dimension, in radical opposition to the linear and artificial time that most of us inhabit: a temporality without direction and potentially without orientation, which mixes proximity and distance.

Matteo Nasini's artistic and musical research insists on the identification of alternatives to classical composition. He always realizes the most radical option, putting the composer aside. The musical processes initiated by Nasini simply exclude any rationality in the choice or exclusion of a sound. In all coherence with his previous production, from the wind harps to the projects Sparkling Matter and Neolithic Sunshine, Screwed Harmonies models a universe in which the human, technology and the outside can coexist in a clean temporality.

SCREWED HARMONIES, 2020
Mixed technique
Unique piece
Courtesy Clima Gallery