the street is our gallery

February 03, 2023 to March 05, 2023

MAGMA gallery is pleased to present “Settimo Giorno”, a solo exhibition by Gonzalo Borondo, from 03.02.2023 to 05.03.2023, at the Ex-Church of San Mattia and MAGMA gallery in Bologna.
Borondo starts from one of the most ancient narrative texts in the world, and undoubtedly one of the most extraordinary, the book of Genesis, to sensorially revisit the first six days of creation.

In “Settimo Giorno” culminates a long creative process that Gonzalo Borondo has been able to intertwine with the peculiar internal structure of the Former Church of San Mattia, without neglecting its spots of meditation, stillness, and silence.

For the first time in this exhibition, the Spanish artist uses video as the main expressive medium: more than sixty videos are placed in the six chapels and the altar to visually narrate the six days of the creation myth.

The videos -almost a thousand cyanotype photograms, manually manipulated-, realized with analog development techniques and combined with the current 3D technology, represent a transition between the past and the present and viceversa, both technically and conceptually.

These visual creations are embedded with the architectural spaces, overlapping them and recreating a kind of unconventional dialogue between heritage and contemporary creation.

In Borondo’s project, walls are not simply a support for images or videos: according to his way of conceiving creation, the space ceases to be a place to exhibit only, and is completely transformed into a habitat -with its atmospheres, textures and environments, with its lights and shadows – that captures anyone who decides to enter San Mattia. This is recreated through moving images, in harmony with words, sound and the act of thinking and challenging the conventions that exist between the artwork and the spectator.

Borondo sets up a process that invites the visitors to play an active role in the different paths that seem to float within the manipulated space, providing multiple options to walk or stop, to get lost or find themselves, to give eyes a break, whether closed or open.
Video installations follow one another in the chapels, in which looped images, different languages, stories and sounds shape the fabric of a multisensory experience. An experience that fully introduces us to a primordial and unique universe in which we discover the enigmas of the six days of creation, without any order established by the artist.

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Ex Chiesa di San Mattia
Via Sant’Isaia n. 14, Bologna – IT
OPENING FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 3, AT 18.30-20.00

Wed-Fri 15.30-19.00 | Sat-Sun 10.30-13.00 / 15.30-19.00
UNTIL 5 MARCH 2023