On 11 December 2020, CANNUBI ON FIRE, the new project by Emilio Ferro, comes alive: a site-specific installation which will illuminate the famous Barolo Cannubi vineyards around the headquarters of the Astemia Pentita winery who commissioned the work throughout the winter. It’s a project that will return to take place on the hill in the years to come over the same period.

Like luminous darts launched from the sky, 30 rods, over 5 meters high above the ground, pierce the ground between the vineyard’s rows: CANNUBI ON FIRE is integrated into the geometry of the landscape thanks to a corten metal structure that houses a luminous heart - a talkative interpreter of the relationship between man and nature.

The work interrupts the ordered rhythm of the Langa, recreating, through the light, a renewed visual harmony in a place where the vineyard is a characteristic anthropic element of the rural landscape. With this project, the artist reflects on the concept of light during the cold season, precisely in the days preceding the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, and does so by intervening in the space between one row and another, in order not to disturb the rest of the precious sleeping vines.

Light interprets the role of fire, useful for winemakers to counteract unexpected frosts and protect the vineyard from the cold: small bonfires between the rows of grapevines that offer a wonderful spectacle and reveal the care of those who take care of the earth.

  

Cannubi On Fire

The first ever temporary light art installation at the foot of the Giza Pyramids bears the signature of Emilio Ferro.

From October 27 to November 29, 2022, Emilio Ferro presents Portal of Light, a site-specific temporary installation conceived by the light artist for 'Forever Is Now II', the major exhibition organised by Art D'Égypte/Culturvator in the shadow of the Pyramids.

At the outskirts of Cairo, the archaeological site of Giza, a UNESCO world heritage site, becomes a place for experimentation and dialogue between generations and cultures.

Emilio Ferro uses light, sound and sculpture to articulate a unique artistic experience and to draw a path capable of traversing history and space. The site-specific installation "Portal of Light" explores the imagery of Ancient Egypt through a reflection on the themes threshold and light: the first, as a bridge between the world of the living and the world of the dead; the second, as an element to which the cult of the sun, worshipping deities such as Isis and Ra, is associated with.

Inspired by two ancient papyri, the Book of the Dead and the Book of Amduat, Portal of Light develops following the orientation of the cardinal points and the changing of the sunlight during the day. Two metal structures follow the perfect inclination of the three pyramids of Giza: the first guards the illuminating body and generates a beam of light capable of passing through the second portal, extending its ray for hundreds of metres.

During the night, spectators will be able to enter the installation, under the beam of light, following its direction: an immersive adventure to experience the journey of god Ra in his boat through the night sky, illustrated in the ancient papyri.

The work can also be enjoyed during daylight hours, because it has been designed considering the path of the sun furthermore, natural light will thus replace the artificial light that illuminates and characterises the work during the night, while a metal line positioned on the ground crosses the two structures for twenty metres and indicates the line to be followed during the day.

To complete the installation, the artist created a sound intervention after recording the wind blowing on the Giza Plateau; Emilio Ferro sampled its sound to compose the soundtrack that embraces his work. Directional speakers, integrated into the structures, modulate the visitor's experience and create an additional narrative level that, thanks to the essential force of light, cuts through the surrounding architectural and natural space, triggering a new confrontation between art, landscape and history.

Portal of Light is part of the group exhibition 'Forever Is Now II', organised by Art D'Égypte/Culturvator, in collaboration with UNESCO and the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

Against the backdrop of the Pyramids of Giza, the last remaining of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the project brings together the works of 12 international artists including Emilio Ferro, SpY, Pascale Marthine Tayou, eL Seed, Natalie Clark, Zeinab Al Hashemi, Therese Antoine, Mohamed Al Faraj, Ahmed Karaly, Jwan Yosef and JR. A universal cultural heritage confronted with contemporary artistic practices: "Forever Is Now II" explores themes from the distant past to the present, to dream about the future of humanity.

Portal Of Light

From May 5 to 7, 2022, Emilio Ferro, invited by Projec\_To, presents QUANTUM, a site-specific temporary installation conceived for Palazzo Martini di Cigala in Turin.

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Starting from the inner courtyard of the palace, built in the early eighteenth century, designed by the architect Filippo Juvarra, Ferro's work runs through the beautiful baroque spaces of the building: from the outer courtyard, a beam of concentrated light breaks into the noble rooms, crossing what is the "positive" space included in Hartmann's magnetic grid. Immediately after World War II, the German doctor Hartmann identified the dense mesh of energy nodes that convey on the surface of the earth a telluric radiation, consisting of bands or "invisible walls" about 21 cm wide arranged along the geomagnetic directions of the earth from North to South and from East to West. At the meeting points of these lines, the "H nodes", the electromagnetic field tends to be stronger and therefore causes the so-called geopathies.

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QUANTUM is a work that dialogues with the space in opposition to these nodes, occupying the surface free from the electromagnetic mesh and promoting the balance of visitors who will stand under the horizontal beam of light. A journey "in positive" that contrasts with the verticality of Juvarra's dark columns present on the ground floor of the building at two "H nodes". The element of light thus creates a new dimensional level that transcends the polarity of opposites and ends its journey by projecting onto a large structure inside the Palace, generating a circle of light, the essential form of the sun, which radiates the surrounding environment with a suspended energy.

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The installation is accompanied by a sound intervention conceived by the artist himself: white noises and electric vibrations modulate the visitor's experience and create a narrative continuum between the essential force of light and the surrounding architectural space, triggering a new confrontation between art, architecture, science and metaphysics.

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Emilio Ferro uses light and sound, which are the foundations of his creative grammar, to draw a new map capable of returning a new synthesis between energy and harmony.

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From May 9th until September 22th, the end of the exhibition, QUANTUM will be replaced by some representations of the installation made by the artist.

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QUANTUM is part of the exhibition Design of Today 2.0 curated by Projec\_To, realized by the gallery owners Simone Becchio (Tempesta Gallery, Milan), Elisabetta Chiono (Crag Gallery, Turin) and Paolo Bonacina (Robilant+Voena, Milan, London, Paris, New York) and aims to represent the artistic avant-garde at 360° in the splendid baroque setting of Palazzo Martini di Cigala in Turin.

  

Quantum

The light artist from Alba, Emilio Ferro, invites to celebrate Beppe Fenoglio’s 100 year anniversary on March 1, 2022\. Ferro creates a light installation, conceptually evoking the figure of the “SEGRETO CARDIOPULSO”, a neologism coined by the writer Fenoglio himself to describe the secret movement of Alba, a Partisan Free Zone from October 10, 1944 and for the next twenty-three days. The signal resonates and lights up right from the Olivetti Studio44, located on the second floor of the Centro Studi Beppe Fenoglio in Alba, in the exact place where the writer loved to work.

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Four beams of light, specularly inclined to the Centro Studi Beppe Fenoglio, compose the work of Emilio Ferro, who underlines on the iconic value of the place, made of memory and inspiration. A dialogue fueled by the propulsive force of the written word, of which Fenoglio was a master, which materializes in the power of light: large metal structures guard the signal of light and project it from inside the building into the sky of Alba, composing a new and vital visual story that ideally continues towards Turin and towards the Cosmos.

The Mole Antonelliana, home of the National Cinema Museum of Torino, lit up with the projection of the image of Beppe Fenoglio 22 to then orient itself in space towards what NASA, thanks to the discovery of the European Observatory on March 1, 1990, has named Planet #7935Beppefenoglio.

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The installation is accompanied by a sound intervention created by Max Casacci, composer and producer of Subsonica, who sampled the sounds of the typewriter that belonged to the author from Alba, used for the occasion by Margherita, Fenoglio's daughter.

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Emilio Ferro gathers the main elements of his creative grammar: light and sound take possession of the space, naturalistic and anthropomorphic, and draw the map of a new narrative, where memory leaps towards the future.

  

Cardiopulso

On the night of the 13th October 2021 the temporary installation TERLO NIGHT HARVEST took place in the Terlo vinyards of the Astemia Pentita winery in Barolo. It is the evolution of the project Barolo To Heaven second act, 2020, by Emilio Ferro.

The exact date of the installation always depends on the grape maturation, which will only be known a few days before the harvest happens and therefor interacts with the circle of nature.

The cyclical installation enables a nightly harvest which ensures a better conservation of the aromatic grapes. Nowadays it is not the most common way of harvesting, still it retains all the charm of certain ancient rituals.

The peasant wisdom teaches that the plant reacts to thermal stress by swelling the berries during the day and retracting them at night, collecting and concentrating the odorous compounds that make the skin more elastic and therefore the bunch of grapes more manageable. During transport to the cellar, the berries will therefore run less risk of breakage and early fermentation that could compromise the quality of the wine.

The space, the vineyard, the workers and the light become all together part of the installation, creating this nocturnal dream.

Terlo Night Harvest

BAROLO TO HEAVEN is a site-specific installation by Emilio Ferro, created on November 1, 2019 with the support of the Fondazione Radical Design in Monforte d’Alba, the highest municipality among the 11 where Barolo is produced.

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A mysterious project that actively involves the viewer and makes him participate in an unveiling, in an all-encompassing artistic journey, in an emotional crescendo that, starting from the historic center of one of the most Beautiful Villages in Italy, leads to the discovery of the atavistic exchange between man and nature, between the sacredness and the symbolism of light. It is a journey that starts from the man-made landscape and leads the public to rediscover the natural landscape of the place through a path in the woods surrounded by darkness.

This work proposes the experience of exploration in a broader sense and is configured as an investigation of human perceptions, stimulated by a constellation of visual and sound stimuli. The mysterious project is revealed to the audience at the last, accompanied by an experimental ambient music: loudspeakers and light sources, placed in the dark space, are activated according to a precise score, thus creating an original dramaturgical journey.

The Light creeps like a blade through the darkness, reaching the clouds and cutting through the fog.

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Emilio Ferro