In Serasini’s view: “The big cooling towers are a lasting but invasive sign of Larderello’s landscape. It is industrial archeology of incredible beauty. Symbolically speaking, they connect the profundity of Earth with its surface, although in a much gentler way than volcanoes do. It is still about energy, perhaps the same energy that fills the stars.”

The idea stems from the photographic installation made by the artist in 2016 for the art exhibition “M’arte Personale”, ideated by ProLoco Montegemoli and organized in collaboration with the association Accademia Libera Natura e Cultura in the medieval hamlet of Montegemoli (Comune di Pomarance).

ORIONIS

URSA MAJOR / BIG DIPPER

PEGASUS

The images alternate themselves on the towers as symbols of a precious canvas, by enveloping the structures and turning them into artworks. Here, in the territory of Alta Val di Cecina, stars appear and surprise both the inhabitant and the passer-by, and enrich the global perception of the landscape. Costellazioni Larderello/light art invites the viewer to reflect on the contemporary man’s need of looking at the stars. Through an inversione, a real overturn of sky and earth, these constellations – that are usually seen from a larger distance – are now materialized in a large scale in front of our eyes.

The artwork becomes the instrument through which the artist asks the viewer to look again at all he has forgotten, and at the same time reflect on such omission.
The four featured constellations are Taurus, Orion, the Big Dipper and Pegasus. In the three sets of images of Larderello 3, each constellation is rendered according to Arabic/Persian iconography of 950 A.D. (left tower), western world in XVII century (middle tower) and today (right tower).

The tower in Larderello 2 has been selected to show the artist’s reinterpretation of the constellations: it is a minimal, strikingly geometrical vision in fierce contrast with the soft lines of both the towers and the landscape. The projected details feature a specific selection of stars, from Aldebaran and the Hyades (Taurus), to Betelgeuse and µ Orionis (Orion), from Alcor and Mizar (Big Dipper), to Scheat (Pegasus).

In the artist’s words: “Before our time, when everything needs to be controlled and precise, and constellations are identified by lines and points, there was pure dream, fantasy. Among the many representations of constellations, I chose three iconographies: those designed by Persian astronomer Al-Sufi (903-986); those illustrated by Polish astronomer J. Hevelius (1611-1687) and German astronomer J. Bayer (1572-1625); and those from our modern/contemporary era, represented this way since 1800. These illustrations are artworks in their own right. Re-drawing them implies a process of appropriation, in order to slowly connect myself to a past time.”