"Campo De Color" by Sonia Falcone III [Venice - 7 September 2013]

(2013)

 

The spices installation "Campo de Color" ("Colour Field") by Sonia Falcone spreads out like a landscape of sensations and provokes synesthetic perceptions. Sweet blue, fiery red and a bitter gold give off a swirl of fragrances; an intense irradiation of all the qualities of matter. As in its original meaning, aesthetics is in this installation, "Campo de Color", a sensation. Throughout history, spieces have motivated marine exploration and trading routes and here inspire the creation of a new landscape. Falcone covered the floor with hundreds of clay pots filled with cocoa, cayenne, chili, achiote, pepper, cinnamon, turmeric, thyme, mjustard, curry, paprika and more... a rich variety of spices to create a minimalist composition in the colour field style. Unlike the smooth cold, surfaces of North American minimalism, Falcone's visual feast displays reliefs composed of pulverised flavours, as hot as Latin American chinli or as sweet as Oriental cinnamon. While the routes of the spieces linked Asia to the ports of Venice in the Middle Ages, "Campo de Color" completes the cartographic picture by drawing in the palette of flavours from the New World. Landscape, banquet, market and altar; these earthbound elements trigger heady sensations and at the same time recall the body's perishable limitations, the ephemeral nature of sensory pleasure and - ultimately - the fleeting nature of life.

Done