Ana Valter. Columbus’ Nightmare

Nuova Icona is proud to present the Ana Valter's so lo exhibition "Columbus’ Nightmare", at Oratorio di San Ludovico. The art installation occupies almost the whole exhi bition area: by entering, the visitors will suddenl y find themselves in a dreamlike dimension, composed by the contours of objects, words and animals. Valter creates wrought-iron profiles of a giant aqu arium and everything living in it: a small boat, seaweeds, waves, a strange little fish, a big flami ngo, a bottle, some (apparently) scattered letters, which finally build up the sentence "according to B otswy it's just like waves", and ants. The installation is composed by tangled draws and s igns, traced in the air and, then, materialized. The spectator can relate with them; he/she can move around them and even enter and passing through.

Therefore, the sacred space becomes a container's c ontainer; Valter does not create the artwork "for" Oratorio di San Ludovico, but "with" Oratorio di San Ludovico, involving the space in her game and, still, keeping a respectful distance: a tiny a nt colony is slowly wending to the altar... The artist works with materials and themes which in timately reflect her, but, this time, she deals with a great scale project. Also the multiples tales she tells us, consequently , are no more private and familiar, but they become an epic story, just like the Columbus' adven tures discovering America, a new world which, in his mind, was extraordinary and wonderful. Here's Columbus' nightmare, embodied by the artist and, mediated by her, by ourselves, the spectators: it is a nightmare, because the road to the unknown always presents high risks and, in this case, the unknown is composed by our dreams an d imagination. Just like a dream or an hallucination, Valter's wor k comes from the non-sense and the bizarre juxtaposition, taking inspiration from the surreali st psychic automatism and, in the end, represents the unceasing research of a pure freedom of express ion.

The words "According to Botswy it's just like waves " is a biographic reference: a sentence by one of Valter's friend, about her work and her way of p erceiving the world. According to this interpretation, Botswy (=the artist, Ana Valter) se es life like a continual up and down, representing our up and down, but it is also something more: wav ing, lulling, sleeping and awakening, being the boundary line between light and darkness, keeping i nside an infinite number of worlds to be discovered. 

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