Discover with us the works included in “Lantern With No Walls,” the first group exhibition organized by the Fondazione with works from its Collection

In “Winter Came Early” (2015) by Janis Rafa (Greece, 1984), we see the violent she will present a new action of a vehicle that, for ten interminable seconds, shakes an almond tree vigorously, causing its leaves to fall prematurely. Using a high-speed video camera shooting at 2000 frames per second, Rafa creates a glaring, melancholy metaphor that evokes a multiplicity of themes: from the unconditional exploitation of the environment by the human race, to the fragility of the equilibrium that we think we are establishing between nature and technology, all the way to the ineluctable transience of all forms of existence.

The surreal character of the situation to which we are spectators is indicative of Rafa’s artistic vision, which is characterized by meticulous enactments that capture the tension between the element of sensuality and the presence of something disturbing, between what looks like a slice of reality and what, in contrast, is the result of cinematographic fiction.

Curated by Leonardo Bigazzi, Alessandro Rabottini, and Paola Ugolini, “Lantern With No Walls” is open everyday at @tarmak22, Gstaad, until February 2, 2025

Image credit: Janis Rafa, “Winter Came Early,” 2015. Still from single-channel video, color, sound, 3’. Courtesy the artist Fondazione In Between Art Film collection ...

Discover with us the works included in “Lantern With No Walls,” the first group exhibition organized by the Fondazione with works from its Collection

“Becoming Alluvium” (2019–Ongoing) by Thao Nguyen Phan (Vietnam, 1987) is a work that looks at the Mekong River as a theater for social, political, environmental, and spiritual change across the centuries. Divided into three chapters, the work is an allegorical meditation on the concepts of destruction, reincarnation, and renewal.

The first chapter evokes the collapse of a dam and the fatal consequences for the villages downstream, through the reincarnation of two adolescent brothers as a dolphin and a water hyacinth. The second chapter is interwoven with images of modern, everyday life along the banks of the river, accompanied by extracts from the 1984 autobiographical novel, entitled “The Lover,” by Marguerite Duras (in which the writer describes her adolescence spent in French Indochina, today’s Vietnam), and from Italo Calvino’s story collection “Invisible Cities,” thereby expanding the exploration of the themes of travel and distance through the prism of literary invention. The final chapter reworks a local folktale that has as its protagonist a princess and which recounts her wish that human beings may recreate the beauty of nature through the manufacture of jewelry.

Phan creates a story that mixes up different timescales and visual languages, combining her love for tradition with her fears over the climate emergency and her understanding of the effects of the colonial past on the present.

Curated by Leonardo Bigazzi, Alessandro Rabottini, and Paola Ugolini, “Lantern With No Walls” is open everyday at @tarmak22, Gstaad, until February 2, 2025

Image credit: Thao Nguyen Phan, “Becoming Alluvium,” 2019–Ongoing. Still from single-channel video, color, sound, 16’ 40”. Commissioned and produced by Han Nefkens Foundation. In collaboration with Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona; WIELS – Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels; Chisenhale Gallery, London. Fondazione In Between Art Film collection ...

Discover with us the works included in “Lantern With No Walls,” the first group exhibition organized by the Fondazione with works from its Collection

“The Wanderers” (2021) by Adrian Paci (1969, Albania) is a metaphorical reflection—conceived during the years of the COVID-19 pandemic—on the relationship between the individual, the community, and time.

The images of this two-channel video installation take us to modern-day, rural Albania, with glimpses of different landscapes and the countryside that surrounds Shkodër, the artist’s home town. In the projection on the left, in limpid black and white, human beings and animals are filmed in slow motion as they cross a snowy, half-deserted street. In the projection on the right, in color, the movement of the figures along the road becomes more intense and frequent, as they appear in the frame only to then disappear from it shortly after. While on the left the lens follows the direction of movement, advancing together with our gaze and with the arrow of time from the present to the future, on the right the camera retreats, allowing the figures to emerge in the visual field only for them to then be immediately swallowed up by memory.

Paci paints a sorrowful portrait of humanity caught between solitude and the need for belonging, transforming the action of walking into a metaphor for the flow of existence, the abandonment of places, and the survival of memory. The work establishes a narrative through images, in which the relationship between History and individual existences transcends the presence of verbal language.

Curated by Leonardo Bigazzi, Alessandro Rabottini, and Paola Ugolini, “Lantern With No Walls” is open everyday at @tarmak22, Gstaad, until February 2, 2025

Image credit: Adrian Paci, The Wanderers, 2021. Still from two-channel video installation, b/w and color, sound, 34’ 40” (left channel) and 8’ 40” (right channel). Courtesy the artist; kaufmann repetto, Milan/New York; Peter Kilchmann Gallery, Zurich. Fondazione In Between Art Film collection ...

Discover with us the works included in “Lantern With No Walls,” the first group exhibition organized by the Fondazione with works from its Collection

The theme of incommunicability is at the center of “Teorema d’incompletezza” (Theorem of Incompleteness, 2008) by Masbedo (Nicolò Massazza, 1973, and Iacopo Bedogni, 1970, Italy). The video is set in Iceland, where ice and lava serve as a metaphorical representation of mutual incomprehension. This natural world, indifferent and hostile to human events, plays host, paradoxically, to a kitchen table, symbol of domestic intimacy, complete with glass dishes and utensils that are destined, over the course of just a few minutes, to shatter, as do the chairs and the table itself. We hear the words of a man and a woman continually interrupted by the violence of the scene.

The choice of Iceland, an island located on the far edge of Europe, manifests the feeling of solitude alongside the relationship between beauty, alienation and mystery. Created by the collision of the North American and Eurasian plates, this land is crossed by a long geological fault which, opening up by a further 3 centimeters every year, is gradually lacerating it. The landscape thus embodies the feeling of inner breakdown and relational distance, as well as a sense of the inexorable ruination of things.

Curated by Leonardo Bigazzi, Alessandro Rabottini, and Paola Ugolini, “Lantern With No Walls” is open everyday at @tarmak22, Gstaad, until February 2, 2025

Image credit: Masbedo, “Teorema d’incompletezza” [Theorem of Incompleteness], 2008. Still from single-channel video, color, sound, 5’ 38”. Courtesy the artists. Fondazione In Between Art Film collection ...

Discover with us the works included in “Lantern With No Walls,” the first group exhibition organized by the Fondazione with works from its Collection

“Melted into the Sun” (2024) by Saodat Ismailova (1981, Uzbekistan) is inspired by the ambiguous figure of Al-Muqannaʿ (“The Veiled One”), a fuller who became a spiritual leader and political agitator in southern Central Asia in the 8th century.

The film meditates on the cultural and political echoes of his revolutionary ideas about the sharing of property and wealth. Adopting a cyclical vision of history and knowledge, the artist transports us to the banks of the Amu Darya River, the circular burial ground of Chillpiq, the city of Bukhara—all sites where the legendary exploits of Al-Muqannaʿ are said to have been performed. But Ismailova also takes us to places that are home to a number of pieces of Soviet infrastructure, such as the Kirov dam, and the solar furnace of Uzbekistan.

This visual journey through time betrays the skilled use of illusion and science made by Al-Muqannaʿ for demagogic purposes, and considers the central role played by technology and the manipulation of the Earth. The lyrical sequences of reflections and flashes, together with the textured soundtrack, continue to make his profound and still-unanswered questions reverberate into the modern day.

Curated by Leonardo Bigazzi, Alessandro Rabottini, and Paola Ugolini, “Lantern With No Walls” is open everyday at @tarmak22, Gstaad, until February 2, 2025

Image credit: Saodat Ismailova, “Melted Into The Sun,” 2024. Still from single-channel video, color, sound, 35’ 50”. Commissioned and produced by Fondazione In Between Art Film. Coproduced by Batalha Centro de Cinema, Porto. Courtesy the artist and Fondazione In Between Art Film. Fondazione In Between Art Film collection ...