Working with films, sculptures and photographs, Renato Leotta observes the landscape in situations of liminal perception. His works understands the idea of the threshold as a place of conflict which arises from the meeting of a space with another one. It’s along such an edge, as if on a beach, that poetry, narratives and all literatures are born, while the sea and the land come together in an illusory flow of time.

The circular hall of MACTE museum brings together a selection of 16mm films recorded by the artist: LUCE (2018), which portrays a fruit that fades, loses its sharpness, becoming pure form, colour and light; Fiumi (2021), in which we see the water of the Baroque fountains of Rome flowing on the monitor with no sound, and yet resonating in contrast to the image of a silent and empty city at lockdown; and then, a few other visual notes collected similarly on film, captured during explorations made by the artist along the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea, from 2010 to the present.

Leotta draws inspiration “from the lines and shapes that the sea creates on the beach when receding with the tides”. The plaster cast, part of Gipsoteca (2012-), is modeled by the flowing tides of the Adriatic Sea and brings the motionless image of a sculpted undertow into the museum space.

There are places that remain behind us, along with the wake of a ship; and there are floods of people descending from a train, as in Gino Brignolo's 1961 black-and-white film Torino Amara, from the Archivio Nazionale Cinematografico della Resistenza in Turin, which documents the perpetual state of being that accompanies migrations towards other destinations.

Renato Leotta (1982, Turin) lives between Turin and Acireale.He is among the featured artists at the Istanbul Biennial 2022; his work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions, including: Sun at Castello Di Rivoli (2020); Garden of Earthly Delights at Gropius Bau, Berlin and Magazzino Art Foundation, New York (2019); Eine Sandsammlung at Kunsthalle St. Gallen, Matrix for actual time at MAC São Paulo and Manifesta 12 in Palermo (2018). Leotta has co-founded the independent art space Cripta 747, Turin and the project Istituto Sicilia, Acireale.