Diwan #2 presents the works of six artists under 30 working in Sicily, selected by the Verein Düsseldorf Palermo e.V., in the spaces of the Meeting designed by Pietro Consagra. The building constitutes the first concrete architectural translation of the theoretical principles developed by the artist in his 1969 volume La città frontale: a theoretical and sculptural manifesto that would later find a more monumental, though ultimately unfinished, interpretation in the Teatro.
Built in reinforced concrete and steel, the Meeting is articulated through an alternation of opaque surfaces and continuous glazed sections, lending the building a pronounced transparency and visually connecting it with the Chiesa Madre, the Sistema delle Piazze, and the theatre itself. The building thus translates Consagra’s principle of two-dimensional tension, developing as a fluid sculptural ribbon, free of traditional orthogonality and wrapped around itself. The interior space, arranged over two levels and traversed by gently sloping ramps, follows the sinuous movement of the structure, replacing traditional verticality and spatial hierarchy with a continuous, horizontal, and frontal dimension.
It is with these elements that the works of the six artists enter into dialogue. In Roberto Orlando’s triptych, the rejection of linear narrative generates montage-like panels in which images and materials compose an imaginary of synthetic and alchemical botany. Alberto Orilia, by contrast, interprets the traversability of the Meeting by transforming the gallery into a symbolic passage, a space of transit and hybridisation.
The tension between space and form takes on a different expression in Tony Lombardo’s installation, where angular figures and sinuous forms enter into dialogue with the curving planes of the architecture. The sculptures of Maria Tindara Azzaro, meanwhile, seem to emerge from the space as natural presences enclosed within white fabrics, contrasting with the greys and curves of the Meeting.
With Requiem for a Techno, Margherita Pedrotta interprets the Meeting as a melancholic site of sedimentation and memory, evoking the remains and traces of moments past. Finally, in the videos of Giovanni Fortunato Messina, the peripheral space is rendered through a multiplicity of intersections and simultaneous viewpoints, far removed from traditional perspectival construction.
Artists: Maria Tindara Azzaro, Tony Lombardo, Giovanni Fortunato Messina, Roberto Orlando, Alberto Orilia and Margherita Pedrotta
Curated by Verein Düsseldorf Palermo e.V.
