Visions in motion — Collective Exhibition

Visions in Motion, born from a friendship and collaboration between Stefano Pisci and Iole Pellion di Persano, founder of Recontemporary, an Italian foundation dedicated to moving images and new media, aims to initiate a dialogue between innovation and diverse geographies. The exhibition, set in a private home, invites viewers to experience video and multimedia art beyond the institutional setting.Bringing together artists from diverse backgrounds – both South African and international – the event converges different perspectives fostering an encounter between artistic voices, challenging conventions, enriching the way we engage with contemporary art. 

Through installations, projections, screens, cathode ray tube televisions, the exhibition  explores the evolving relationship between humanity, technology, and the natural world. It examines resilience, transformation, and the interplay between presence and absence, reflecting on how these forces shape our lives. By intertwining artistic visions from different geographies, the exhibition aims to highlight the power of moving images in reflecting, questioning, and reshaping the realities we inhabit. 

Entering the villa Dan Halter’s video highlights human resilience amid systemic challenges showing indelible scenes from Zimbabwe’s history as William Kendridge illustrates through his four films the political landscape and emotional layers of national trauma, from anger and despair to forgiveness and hope. The exhibition continues with an intergenerational stories, exploring the boundaries of physicality and mind with Emma Scarafiotti delving into mental health, gentrification, and identity through choreography and film and Penny Siopis who narrates gender fluidity during the apartheid with evocative images from her personal background. 

The perspective between different geographical points and language is enriched by the presence of Lawrence Weiner and his desire to engage in conversation with the viewer, as well as Marcel Odenbach’s Im Schiffbruch nicht schwimmen können, which confronts colonial legacies by juxtaposing Sub-Saharan migrants with Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa.

Opening a conversation among the inside and outside as per our boundaries is the work of rosenclaire, represented by Goodman, followed by Miguel Chevalier’s Sur Natura, where digital flowers liaise with the existing garden and Lorenzo Peluffo and Enrico Turletti installation in which the South African fynbos mixes with the european flora thanks to a sensory bridge trough light, technology and sound captured by the flow of sap in italian plants. Closing the show Armin Linke’s Nuclear Voyage reflects on unfulfilled promises of technological optimism through haunting imagery of decommissioned nuclear sites and Cristine Rebet’s Breath in – Breath out where we are carried in a journey through the beauty and devastation of nature and technologies.

Gianluca Iadema ’s works, made during a month residency in Cape Town, connect all the other ones through the elements of an old piano. His work unexpectedly explores the multidimensional aspects of the world of particle physics and its unveiling through our development of technology right down to the splitting of the atom in our pursuit of energy, touching on the nature of our very existence.

Special thanks to: Stevenson Gallery, Gregor Podner, rosenclaire, Teresa Sapey Collection, Happy by Nature, Cape Fynbos Oils, Laura Vincenti, Italian Institute of Culture Pretoria, Consulate of Italy in Cape Town.