Exhibition: Antonio Rovaldi – Torno indietro un attimo

On Tuesday 14 May at 7 pm, Foto Forum will inaugurate Torno indietro un attimo, an exhibition by Italian artist Antonio Rovaldi curated by Angelika Burtscher and Daniele Lupo and produced by Foto Forum together with Lungomare.
The project tells the story of the Adige River through a series of photographs, a sound and video installation and a book. Part of the broader program FLUX − River Interventions and Explorations, which Lungomare has been developing since 2022, the project is the result of an extensive residency Antonio Rovaldi undertook between spring and winter 2024. Traveling by foot and bicycle, the artist traversed the entire course of the river to produce a narrative of the river territory across its entire geography, from its source at Passo Resia in Alta Val Venosta to its mouth at Rosolina Mare in Veneto on the Adriatic Sea.

Antonio Rovaldi – Torno indietro un attimo, Exhibition by Foto Forum, Bolzano/Bozen (Italy)

The photographic series, displayed in the exhibition with thirty-seven prints and a broad collection of slides, was created on film, giving rise to a sequence that forms the rhythm of a real diary in which the river engages in dialogue with landscapes sometimes shaped by human activity, sometimes wilder, responding to diverse contexts, encountering people, plants, animals, seasons and varying light conditions each time.
From its source in Bunker No. 20, built during World War II, the small stream then becomes a regimented and canalised watercourse throughout the Alpine region. Showing us its face most rigidly conditioned by human intervention in the highland territories of South Tyrol and Trentino, it then suddenly becomes softer once it reaches the Venetian lowlands, changing its shape abruptly near the border between the two regions, near Rovereto. Here the artist comes into contact with the ‘geological’ time of the landscape when he comes across dinosaur footprints from the Jurassic era, an archaeological find from thirty years ago that captured the attention of all spheres of paleontology.

Antonio Rovaldi – Torno indietro un attimo, Exhibition by Foto Forum, Bolzano/Bozen (Italy)

Torno indietro un attimo thus maps a geographical trajectory through which one can move forward and backward:
For me, photography is above all a moment that marks a pause along a journey. A pause is a point that, when connected to another, determines a distance and the complexity of a drawing, or a map that is absolutely personal and never definitive, in constant motion. Leaving and returning, and vice versa. It is not how long a distance is that is important, but the time it takes us to travel it, one step after another, pausing and restarting. It is always a question of rhythm, because it is the rhythm of the sequence, of the montage, that reconstructs the memory of it and its geographical layout. (Antonio Rovaldi)

The artist narrated his journey along the Adige River through various languages and media. In addition to the analogue photographic series displayed in the exhibition, there is also a wide selection of slides. These snapshots interrupt the printed sequence, offering verifications, details, and behind-the-scenes glimpses of the journey. The video titled 20” fermo davanti or di fianco al fiume inspiro schiena dritta braccia tese Adige 2023–24 features a grid of moving frames consisting of eight hundred videos in random mode, captured by Rovaldi with his mobile phone at precise distances from his eye. The sound installation Ludwig, created in collaboration with sound designer Tommaso Zerbini, blends river sounds with excerpts from the speeches of Ludwig Schöpf, the guardian of Opera 20, who every day welcomes visitors to the site and has become an integral voice within it.

Antonio Rovaldi – Torno indietro un attimo, Exhibition by Foto Forum, Bolzano/Bozen (Italy)

The book titled Morgen – Torno indietro un attimo, published by Quodlibet, combines all the photographs taken by Antonio Rovaldi and completes the project with texts by Esther Kinsky, one of the most significant authors of contemporary literature, and an exchange of letters between the artist and Marco Avanzini, geologist at the MUSE in Trento, and an introduction text by Angelika Burtscher and Daniele Lupo, curators of the project.

Torno indietro un attimo is part of the long-term project by Lungomare, FLUX – River Interventions and Explorations, a transdisciplinary project conceived and developed by Lungomare from 2022, where the river landscapes of Bolzano – and beyond – are observed and activated from various perspectives together with local and international artists, architects and researchers. On the one hand, the project arises and reacts to the hydrological and climatic crisis we are currently experiencing, and on the other, through artistic productions and multidisciplinary pathways, it represents an opportunity to experiment with concrete forms of activation through a critical approach to making.

Torno indietro un attimo from the 3rd of June also reach out into the city through a series of public posters bringing faraway river imaginaries to Bolzano.

Discover them along the riverbanks! Download the map here.

Public billboards, Antonio Rovaldi – Torno indietro un attimo, Exhibition by Foto Forum, Bolzano/Bozen (Italy) Photo: Lungomare

Two special events will follow in Venice and Verona, staged thanks to the collaboration with the partners THE NEW INSTITUTE Centre for Environmental Humanities (NICHE) and Grenze-Arsenali Fotografici. On Monday 24 June at Ca’ Bottacin, headquarters of NICHE (Ca’ Foscari University Venice), Antonio Rovaldi’s project will be presented and discussed during a seminar in the framework of the research groups Ecological Art Practices and Waterscapes, followed by a public presentation within the series Art Ecologies. On Saturday 14 September, part of the exhibition Torno indietro un attimo will open at the Isolo space for the Festival Grenze Arsenali Fotografici in Verona (until 30 September).

Antonio Rovaldi – Torno indietro un attimo, Exhibition Foto Forum, Bolzano/Bozen (Italy), 2024, Installation view by Luca Guadagnini

Antonio Rovaldi – Torno indietro un attimo, Exhibition Foto Forum, Bolzano/Bozen (Italy), 2024, Installation view by Luca Guadagnini

Antonio Rovaldi – Torno indietro un attimo, Exhibition Foto Forum, Bolzano/Bozen (Italy), 2024, Installation view by Luca Guadagnini

Antonio Rovaldi – Torno indietro un attimo, Exhibition Foto Forum, Bolzano/Bozen (Italy), 2024, Installation view by Luca Guadagnini

The project Torno indietro un attimo is supported by Strategia Fotografia 2023, promoted by Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture.

Co-financed by the Autonomous Province of Bolzano/Bozen – South Tyrol and City of Bolzano, the project is produced by Foto Forum and Lungomare and staged in collaboration with NICHE, University Ca’ Foscari in Venice and Grenze-Arsenali Fotografici, Verona. The photographic series will become part of the collection of Museion – Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Bozen/Bolzano.