CONTANDO ALL’INFINITO * STELLE SCOPA / COUNTING TO INFINITY * SWEEPING STARS
The Counting to Infinity series marks a meaningful homecoming for Molteni who exhibited the first iteration of this work in their hometown of Nashville (Coop Gallery)- the second, in their ancestral home of Northern Italy (A Plus A Gallery, Venice, Italy). These installations exist within the artist’s larger breadth of immersive environments and ground works. The works carry them full circle, integrating looping artworks by the concept of Antiphony, or “Call and Response”, between the above and the below.
More info on THE DECK that grew out of this body of work
Contando All’Infinito: Stelle Scopa / A Plus A Gallery / Venice, Italy
Immersive installation for the exhibition Figure, Character, Sign- including street sweeping brooms, Risograph printed posters, Clay slip, Milk Paint
Counting to Infinity: Sweeping Stars (Contando All’Infinito: Stelle Scopa) incorporates 50 hand-and-stone sets into card designs, inspired by regional Italian playing cards. Molteni’s original deck departs slightly from tradition to include 5 elemental/alchemical suits- with planetary court cards replacing Page, Knights/Queens, Kings- plus an additional grouping of 11 astrologically meaningful asteroids (interstellar rocks), positioned like “I Trionfi /Triumphs” of the Tarot. Thus, the total number of 61 cards equals the full number of prayer beads on a Rosary.
This deck reconstructs Molteni’s favorite Italian card game - Scopa, which translates to “broom”, “to sweep”, or “to fuck” in Italian. The basic goal of the game is to “sweep” the cards off the “floor” or playing surface. This installation presents wall-bound poster arrangements featuring the card designs resting upon familiar Cosmatesco floor tiling motifs. There are also assemblages of cards on the floor of the gallery. Poster backs function as a title card, with credits assuming the orbital path of the planetary body Sedna. While studying comets, meteoroids and asteroids, Molteni learned that ancient Chinese astronomers referred to Comets with a character that translates to “Broom Stars” or “Sweeping Stars” in English. With support from Luca De Gaetano, Stelle Scopa was chosen as the Italian translation, naturally echoing the game’s namesake. Five Italian street sweeping-style brooms, named after notable Italian Astronomers, stand at the ready to reset the game and space… and the cycle continues.
A guide to the suit symbology which are all structures hand- made from stone:
Wells / Water / Blue
Obelisks / Air / Green
Pyramids (now pinecones) / Fire / Yellow
Gravestones / Earth / Red
Labyrinths / Spirit/Ether / Violet
Asteroids / Triumphs
Counting To Infinity / Coop Gallery / Nashville, TN
Terrestrial Antiphony assembles every stone collected and kept by the artist throughout their life. Plucked from land and seascapes as disparate as Tennessee, Iceland, California, Dalmatian Islands, Hawaii, Atlantic coastlines, and the Philippines, they sit together in an elongated ring that echoes the orbit of a dwarf planet named Sedna.
Celestial Antiphony creates a cycle of beats on the fingers and illustrates a childhood shortcut for praying the Rosary when beads have gone missing. The artist has returned to the modular, rhythmic orb-based practice of prayer, which transcends boundaries of faith and constructs of time. Molteni has created drawings of their hands, positioned to hold each of 50 stones they collected over many years and walks around the world. The hands are depicted in cradled positions that accommodate each stone’s weight and contour. Five decades of colored fingers count the 50 “Hail Mary” prayers that complete a Rosary loop.
Lunar Antiphony presents a work of movement for video in Seyðisfjörður, Iceland captured the week that Covid 19 was first detected in the United States. The artist responds improvisationally to the environment and a stone boat that appeared and disappeared with tidal shifts throughout the day. An underlying soundtrack of lunar recordings plays throughout the piece.