Ramp Project: Luca Buvoli, A Very Beautiful Day after Tomorrow (Un Bellissimo Dopodomani)

January 20 - March 25, 2007

Exhibition walkthrough with Luca Buvoli and Ingrid Schaffner, Senior Curator
Friday, January 19, 5-6pm, ICA Members Only

Opening Reception
Friday, January 19, 6-8pm

Luca Buvoli (b. 1963, Brescia, Italy, lives in New York and Houston, Texas) uses video, sculpture, and drawings to transform ICA's ramp into a 3-D marquis for "A Very Beautiful Day after Tomorrow (Un Bellissimo Dopodomani)." This title names both the project and the artist's new video that makes its premiere as part of the multi-media installation. The words are those of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who founded Futurism, the avant-garde movement that brought Italy up to speed with Modernism and into controversial relationship with Fascism during the early 20th century. The title looms large in letters cast from translucent resin and suspended within the lofty ramp space, where a human figure in flight zooms overhead. The words are also spoken by Marinetti's daughter Vittoria, who Buvoli interviewed as part of the video which presents central themes of Buvoli's recent work: velocity and flight.

The appeal of flight is as spectacular as the danger. Exploring aesthetic as well as political aspects of flight, Buvoli’s featured video is part of a three-channel work. One monitor is dedicated to the mostly animated video A Very Beautiful Day after Tomorrow (Un Bellissimo Dopodomani), Part I; two monitors present How can this Thing be Explained? (Come Si Può Spiegare Questo Cosa?), Section A and B, which features interviews in Italian and English. Throughout the installation, documentary footage and passages of pure animation merge personal memory, historic accounts, and pictorial abstractions. The daughters of Marinetti, as well as scholars address the problematic aspects that Futurism evokes in its celebration of violence. Music also plays a key role. Conceptually speaking, “A Very Beautiful Day after Tomorrow (Un Bellissimo Dopodomani)” is the latest installment in the overall project Flying-Practical Training that Buvoli initiated in 1997.

This exhibition is accompanied by a brochure publication with an essay by Christine Poggi, Associate Professor, Department of the History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania with an introduction by Ingrid Schaffner, Senior Curator.

Installation views at ICA. Photos by Aaron Igler. > click to enlarge








ICA acknowledges primary sponsorship of the William Penn Foundation for this project. Additional funding has been provided by The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, The Dietrich Foundation, Inc., the Overseers Board for the Institute of Contemporary Art, friends and members of ICA, and the University of Pennsylvania. ICA is also grateful for in-kind support from Loews Philadelphia Hotel. (Information complete as of 11/27/06.)

Images: Luca Buvoli, Video Stills from "A Very Beautiful Day After Tomorrow (UN Bellissimo Dopodomani)", 2006. DVD, color, sound. Courtesy of the artist.


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