Amitai Romm at VEDA / Florence

AMITAI ROMM – GRAFT

from Feb 11 to Mar 25 2023

VEDA

Via delle Cascine 35
50144 Firenze

Photo courtesy: Flavio Pescatori

Amitai Romm work is related to context specific or context reflective art practices. So thinking about the secular but esoteric symbolic space of exhibitions and how they mediate experience. And thinking expansively about the functions of such institutions in relation to other contexts and environments (of knowledge production, scientific research and natural ecosystems as mediated by technology).
The initial research which led to this exhibition, began with an interest in the morphology of the parabolic shape as it appears in both biology and technical systems. Especially in relation to commercial satellite technology as an emblem for a specific social imaginary of communication and information processing. Romm was also interested in the physical properties of the parabolic shape, which concentrates wave signals in a focal point (electromagnetic waves, light, sound). In an exhibition context, an object which is designed to effectively receive and relay signals becomes expressive.
The work on view builds upon research that was begun around 2021, exploring the hybrid relationships that can be formed between plant life, sensors, data collection processes and our own human bodies. This work was developed in dialogue with practitioners from various sites of scientific research into ecosystems and climate modeling.
The first iteration in this series was presented in the occasion of Hum, Amitai Romm solo show at Spike Island, Bristol, in 2022. The works on view were made with materials and signals from a mature beech forest in Soroe, in eastern sealand in Denmark. The forest hosts the ICOS (Integrated Carbon Observation System) station in Sorø. Which is an environmental sensing system that was set up in 1996 as a part of an international effort to collect climate related data from forests across the planet. The artist find this station interesting because it focuses on a local and specific ecosystem, while the systemic changes it documents have a profound impact everywhere on earth.
But what are the imaginative skills this type of sensation asks of us?
Graft marks a further development and level of abstraction and/or figuration for this system. In its present configuration the works depart from their parabolic origins along several pathways of fantasy in search of a new skin.