“Every meteorite sighted is a victory of form and light; every work is a celebration of the successful completion of an initiation.” (Bizhan Bassiri)

Bizhan Bassiri’s imagination is ignited by the fascinating physical phenomenon of the “fall of meteorites”, luminous trails of fire flaring suddenly in the darkness of the night sky when the Earth’s orbit passes through zones occupied by meteoric trails. Over time, inspired by these celestial bodies and their unpredictable appearances, the Italian-Persian artist has not only created an impressive repertoire of bronze sculptures but also elaborated the theoretical bases of his aesthetic thought, in Magmatic Thought (1984) and Manifesto of Magmatic Thought (1986), which continue to inform his work to this day.
Bassiri conceived an entire cycle of work under the poetic suggestion of these meteorites, which burn as they enter into the sphere of action of Earth’s gravity yet still manage to impact onto the planet. In addition to the objective diversification of the bronze meteorites created by the artist, their morphological quality assumes varied figural aspects, alternating the essentiality of pure solids, suspended in air with cables or resting on the ground, with the more specific forms of a brain, sarcophagus, beast, guardian and others. In this way, they gain a broader, more visionary power that brings to bear an authentic mythology invented by the artist himself with explicit reference to his two theories as outlined in the points of the Manifesto of 1986, a work-in-progress to this day.

There is a special significance to the plastic cycle of La Caduta delle Meteoriti – which has its epilogue in the exhibition at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale of Venice, a compendium of every previous episode. It can be seen as a “visitation” of art to art, an encounter of plastic sensibilities, which, though conceived historically in different eras – from the Greek-Egyptian and Roman eras to our own – share the timeless present of art that does not ignore history nor its essential overcoming – as Bassiri believes – towards which art nonetheless tends.
After announcing its appearance in various forms and theorizing it in some of his writings, Bassiri first exhibited the ‘Caduta delle Meteoriti nelle ore vitali che anticipano la visione’ in April 2009 in Ghent, Belgium, in the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst and in St Bavo Cathedral, in the sacred spaces adjacent to the room where Jan Van Eyck’s Mystic Lamb is displayed. Thereafter, it was exhibited in Florence, Rome, and Cosenza, in a number of particularly beautiful sites.

This itinerant exhibition features two permanent sculptures – the Meteorite placed in one of the most frequently visited sites in Florence, the courtyard of the Galleria dell’Accademia, and the Guardian, in the Monumental Complex of Sant’Agostino in Cosenza.

SITES

GHENT, 25 April – 23 August 2009
Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, curated by Philippe Van Cauteren; Cathedral of St Bavo, Ludo Colin, Ghent (Belgium).

FLORENCE, 21 May – 30 August 2009
Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory, curated by Francesco Palla; Galleria dell’Accademia, curated by Franca Falletti; Palazzo Strozzi, curated by James Bradburne.

COSENZA, 16 April – 10 June 2010
‘Erme’, Museo Civico dei Brettii e degli Enotri; ‘Il Guardiano’, Complesso Monumentale di Sant’Agostino; ‘Specchi Solari’, Galleria Vertigo Arte, curated by Ilari Valbonesi.

ROME, 1 June – August 2010
Piazza San Lorenzo in Lucina, in collaboration with Incontri Internazionali d’Arte, Oredaria Arti Contemporanee, Pio Monti Arte Contemporanea, Acquario Romano, Fondazione Volume!, Zerynthia Associazione per l’Arte Contemporanea, La Nube di Oort, Galleria Il Cortile, Archivio Sante Monachesi, and Giacomo Guidi Arte Contemporanea.