Perfect pitch

Based on an idea by Remo Salvadori, the exhibition Perfect pitch brings together the latest works by Marco Andrea Magni, Filippo Manzini and Sandro Mussida.

The three artists have been invited to dialogue with each other and with the bright space of Studio 3 in Assab One. Despite creating a single symphony, the works on display inhabit the space individually. From the ceiling, a large six-armed compass, swinging and librating, invites the viewer to look upwards. Marco Andrea Magni uses sculpture as a metaphor for a halo to linger on the border between measurable science and unimpeachable faith. Filippo Manzini, fascinated by the verticality of surfaces, creates an installation that, based on the linearity of the structural elements of his work, runs along an entire wall in an obsessive search for geometry and minimalism. Finally, Sandro Mussida brings to the exhibition an exercise in concentration and balance. The video of a sunrise spotted among the thousands of cameras placed in every place on earth for weather, tourism, traffic, gradually reveals itself in real time and intertwines with a crescendo of sound, a note played by a synthesiser.

Three works, three artists, one space and one conductor for a perfect pitch.

Text by Remo Salvadori

“I have known Elena since 1997 when she visited my solo exhibition at the Pecci Museum in Prato and we have always found reasons to be close. Space, this space, has always been between us a reason of meeting. Certain absences of mine have found in my reappearance surprises and advancements, up to this moment that has become a landscape understood and shared in loving ways. Assab One is an increasingly mature and hospitable sound. It is in this sound that Orecchio assoluto (Perfect Pitch) is embedded, which is a quality and characteristic in the musical sphere that can also be understood more broadly as listening to oneself, constant attention to the breath of our actions. In the cone of light between friends, Marco, Filippo and Sandro, acrobats of art, to make us experience moments of attention, of listening in real time, with Albe (Dawns) found to make simultaneous and profound being in the moment, an experience that urges us to be present with mind, heart and limbs. Thanks to the three acrobats. Thanks to Elena.”

Assab One November 11, 2023
Remo Salvadori

Biography of Remo Salvadori

Remo Salvadori (1947, Italy), moving from the influence of arte povera, he founded a personal grammar that privileges geometrisms and reiterations to access metaphysical realms. His work is firmly anchored in the idea of place as a creative concept that ties the threads of the everyday to a magical universe of symbols and spirituality. During his long career, he has taken part in major international exhibitions including several Venice Biennials (1982, 1986, 1993) and Kassel Documenta (1982, 1992) and in numerous solo exhibitions in museums including the MAXXI (Rome, 2012), MAN Museum (Nuoro, 2015), Building Gallery (Milan, 2017), Stiftung Insel Hombroich (Hombroich, 2018). From Alfabeto (a work exhibited at MAXXI in 2019), the artist created the work Nel momento (In the moment) for the Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana.

“[…] Space is always the main reference of Remo Salvadori, who interprets it as a source of creative psychic energy, so that even his studio is thematised in the work, and transfigured in the spiritual resonances that environments and objects always assume in his work. […]”
(Giorgio Verzotti, The Collection. Castello di Rivoli, first edition Charta, 1995)

Biographies of the artists

Marco Andrea Magni (1975, Switzerland) is an Italian visual artist and sculptor. He graduated from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, where he obtained an FSE master’s degree in Visual Arts Organisation and Communication Techniques. He attended the Visual Arts course at the Antonio Ratti Foundation in Como, curated by Angela Vettese and Giacinto di Pietrantonio, with Richard Nonas. At the IUAV in Venice he took part in seminars on philosophy with Giorgio Agamben, on the history of architecture with Roberto Masiero and on visual art with Remo Salvadori.
His work evolves across several subjects: from moral philosophy to artistic reflection and to the experience of sculpture, until one can find their own epicentre in a dialogue with the other that embodies the representative interlocutor. The artworks epitomise the way to exist in this world, arranging themselves to become all of its facets, embracing the numerous manners one needs in order to stay. He has recently exhibited in numerous solo shows such as Materie, spazi, visioni curated by Giorgio Verzotti and Francesca Pasini (Building Gallery, Milan, 2020), Milano Drawing Week, Luciano Fabro & Marco Andrea Magni curated by Irina Zucca Alessandrelli – Fondazione Ramo (Loom Gallery, Milan, 2021), Chapter III / Il giallo del buffone at Galleria FuoriCampo (Siena, 2022) and Flashbacks curated by Alice Montanini (Building Gallery, Milan, 2022).

Filippo Manzini (1975, Florence) is an Italian visual artist and sculptor. His work has always been driven by his relationship with space, with a particular interest in urban space. His research on sculpture and site-specific public art installations began in Los Angeles in 2012. Then, in 2017, he created the Strength project: a series of installations in Milan’s urban fabric: five interventions along a route that led from the church of San Cristoforo sul Naviglio to Piazza Santo Stefano. In recent years, Filippo Manzini has been expressing himself mainly in outdoor environments, non-places, also creating performances in which his sculptures, made from materials he assembles on the spot, interact with space and emphasise the necessary relationship between materials, space and gestures. He took part in numerous exhibitions in Italy and abroad, such as Equilibrium, un’idea per la scultura italiana at Galeria Mazzoleni (London/Turin, 2018), Spazio/Forma/Concetto at Fondazione Kenta (Milan, 2020), Come pesci nell’acqua Villa Nigra (Ameno, NO, 2021) and recently Spazio/Territorio, Archivio Agnetti (Milan, 2022), all curated by Giorgio Verzotti.

Sandro Mussida (1974, Milan) is a composer, cellist, curator based between London and Tuscany.
Riding the razor’s edge between rigorous experimentation, innovation, and tradition, Mussida’s work investigates active listening, the identity of musical languages and rites. Central to Mussida’s work is the role of the performer, the experience of sound in a given space, and the relation of those sounds to memory and observation. His music involves historical, non-equal-tempered tuning systems questioning its perception by the western, standardized ear. On the intersection between acoustical/classical, electric and electronic fields, he writes for orchestra, chamber and solo instruments, electronics.
His projects have been exhibited in important institutions in Italy and abroad; Albe, The Sunrise Over Taipei City, Kunsthalle Bern (Bern, 2023), Portraits Of Friends (2021, a film by Rebecca Salvadori), Camden Arts Centre (London, 2022), EPPURE SENTIRE, Het HEM Arts Centre (Amsterdam, 2022). His works are published by Sony Classical, Boomkat, Tapeworm, Blume Editions, Metrica, Soave Records, Curl, Die Schachtel.

Performance by Sandro Mussida

Sandro Mussida, Albe, The Sunrise Over Sydney (AU) for cello, saw waves, live electronics and internet real-time cameras.
Performance realised during the opening of Orecchio assoluto exhibition on Saturday, November 11.

The video is available at this LINK.

Video shooting by Leonardo Pedio
Editing by Mafalda Galessi

Performance by Filippo Manzini

As part of the exhibition Perfect Pitch, on Thursday, November 23rd, Filippo Manzini presented a live performance.

“My installations are born within a space and in response to it—through listening. With minimal interventions, I introduce subtle disturbances into the usual perception of the architecture hosting my works/actions. Often, my sculptures emerge from a performative experience, later becoming photographs that serve as recollections of sculptural events. Between the image and the object portrayed—exhibited within the show—an equivalence of formal research is created. For me, the act of composing the work is a fundamental element.”
—Filippo Manzini

10+1
Wood, cotton fiber string, variable dimensions, 2023
Unpublished sculpture, conceived and created for the exhibition Perfect Pitch

Filippo Manzini’s interventions originate in the place and for the place: as Sigfried Giedion once observed, man gains awareness from the void that surrounds him, giving it a physical form and expression. The effect of this transfiguration—elevating space through the sign of emotion—is the very conception of space itself.

A video is available at this LINK

Video editing by Rebecca Salvadori