Valerio Rocco Orlando

Valerio Rocco Orlando (1978), with his Take Me to the Border, reflects a non-visible element, the relationship’s gaze. A look directed to the city, at the Sassi, with which he tried to understand what is inside, what goes on beyond their physical structure, what exists through them. The installation has been conceived as a building site of thought, an open work area in which the meeting is staged, revealing the processes of construction of a work, a social sculpture, today housed in the rooms of Palazzo Pomarici.
“The experience of the border starts from within, always. To set limits means to contain something within a set of dots and yet, at the same time, it retains the meaning of threshold. It represents being at the threshold, at the edge of something for an initial period, a time of preparation, which is necessary to get to know ourselves and discover what lies beyond. Then crossing the boundary becomes a ritual, joining a new world. [...]
Over the past few years, I have spent much time in Matera, expressing on several occasions the desire to be welcomed by the city, but above all by the people with whom I have had the opportunity to connect from time to time. And, little by little, that distinctive and world-famous landscape, both UNESCO World Heritage Site and European Capital of Culture, has fallen out of focus allowing me to put not the Sassi, but faces in the frame: Adele, Flavio, Angela, Giusi, Maria, Peppino, Francesco, Michele, Brunella, Serena, Mario, Tommaso, Antonio, Dario, Debora, Fabrizio, Ariam, Costantino, Angelo, Sergio, Maria Domenica, Aman, Samir, Uccio and Michele again all represented my ‘border,’ a threshold that allows to gaze at what surrounds us in a different way, from within.”

CONTENTS

The artist makes the visible necessary
Raffaello De Ruggieri, President of Fondazione Zètema

Where have you taken me?
Simona Spinella

The Talking Heads Renew the Landscape
Tiziano Scarpa

Border is the name of a person, a place, a relationship
Valerio Rocco Orlando

Biography