L. Rabbia, “The Rest of Time” – Arte all’Arte, 2004
Medieval Fount
San Gimignano
Italian artist born in 1970, Luisa Rabbia lives and works in New York and Milano. Her research starts from the perceptions of the body, seen as the limit zone between the inside and the outside of the induvidual human being, and focuses on think, memory and the flowing of time, highliting the human fragility. Many of her works are made of silicone because of its capacity of representing the formal interpenetration of what is organic and what is not. A recurring theme in Rabbia’s work is the relation between men and enviroment. Also the sleep represents a limit, the one between unconscious and wake, and is a way to an other dimension in which everyone can learn someting about him/herself.
Inside the project The Rest of Time the water is the transient element which most recall of the running of time; its mother and stepmother, dispencer of life and death. Luisa Rabbia works on a fount with a mosaic sculpture with the image of a big old man, the Time, trapped between the waters, the moss and the humidity. The face, the hands and the foot outside the blanket are made in porcelain to highlight the falling tears on the face of the old man. The blanket itself is a sort of sarcophagus and shroud, it protects and covers the old man by the weather and humidity. The sculpture seems to be stuck in the moss, suspended on the water like a kind of Ophelia. The old man’s face express in its deep wrinkles all the pietas of a strong religious consciousness.
