Sein und zeit

The installation, created on the occasion of the exhibition “The black knight”, (famous portrait of Gianbattista Moroni exhibited at the Poldi Pezzoli Museum in Milan), returns to the theme of black and portrait but with a contemporary curvature, taking photography as the current medium corresponding to the portrait on canvas of the past.

The perimeter borders are those of a bellows of a camera: in the designated space the gigantic stylized representation of the optical body of a reflex device is represented, in front of which a hyperrealistic contemporary mannequin is posing for the shot. But for a spell or a game of memory, the negative image of the Knight in black is impressed on the acetate of the chassis.

To underline the effect of alienation on the edge of the lens, instead of the brand of the camera, the words “sein und zeit” are engraved (which in addition to creating an assonance with “zeiss”, a renowned optical lens factory) , ironically quotes a fundamental work of the philosophical twentieth century: “Sein und Zeit” (“Being and time”) by Martin Heidegger.