Daniela Comani

Perturbazione

Curated by Francesca Guerisoli

“Perturbazione / Disturbance” is Daniela Comani’s first solo exhibition in Abruzzo. For Fondazione La Rocca, the artist creates a site-specific project that involves the expansive central hall of the foundation, providing the exhibition its title. In the adjacent room, artworks and artist books created over the years are displayed, unified by the use of language as the text-image of the artwork.

The site-specific project “Perturbazione” (2023), produced by Fondazione La Rocca, consists of a series of text-image visuals and an artist book that utilizes meteorology to reflect on the current moment of climate crisis while also delving into society and the dynamics of perception and interpretation of crisis situations conveyed daily by the news. Starting with a white image that gradually turns black, a series of weather forecast texts describe increasingly catastrophic scenarios.

In the second room, there is “Novità editoriali a cura di Daniela Comani” (2007 – ongoing), a photographic series where the artist has reworked the titles of covers of international classic novels. Starting from her own library, she photographed the book covers and manipulated the titles, changing the gender of the protagonists. This series gives life to a second installation: “Orlando’s Library,” a site-specific presentation of a trompe-l’oeil library where Comani digitally placed a selection of books from “Novità editoriali a cura di Daniela Comani.”

“Fine” (2007) consists of a scan of the last page of the book “La coscienza di Zeno,” a psychoanalytic novel by Italo Svevo published in 1923. Svevo had an apocalyptic vision of a great explosion several years before the birth of the atomic bomb; a century later, his vision remains more relevant than ever.

“L’inizio La fine” (2014-2020) is an artist book and a wall installation. The installation comprises a diptych and a three-part print of 424 cards written and archived during the working process. It is a collection of quotes from 212 novels, visually representing the writing of a book with two parts that converge in the middle. The artist has gathered two quotes for each novel, the first and the last sentences, which in the collage of texts that forms create a new narrative. Through symmetry, the end becomes a story of coincidences.

With the exhibition “Perturbazione / Disturbance,” Francesca Guerisoli inaugurates her artistic direction, presenting exhibition projects and new context-specific productions for the spaces of the foundation and the city of Pescara. The aim