David Tremlett: Another Step / The Organ Pipes

Chiostri di San Pietro
Via Emilia San Pietro 44/c
42121 Reggio Emilia
Italy

Ex Caffarri
Via Flavio Gioia, 4
42124 Reggio Emilia 
Italy

The city of Reggio Emilia continues to invest in contemporary art. David Tremlett was invited to undertake an imposing permanent intervention in the northern area of the city in a former feed factory and, simultaneously, to hold an exhibition in the ancient San Pietro Cloisters, in the very heart of the town. The project is promoted by Fondazione Palazzo Magnani and Municipality of Reggio Emilia.

This permanent artistic intervention involved thirteen silos and the façade of the adjacent building. The organizations that will be housed in the building all deal with creative languages, be it through new forms of education, recycling of waste materials for artistic purposes, or theatrical activities. The title—The Organ Pipes—equates the imposing silos to a pipe organ, and the interweaving of the structures above with the production of sound, in which the interweaving rhythms of color and form give rise to virtual sonorities. A functional yet abandoned architecture is thus transformed into an emblem of the neighborhood, offering “food for thought,” and confirming Tremlett’s artistic vocation: to work in space and architecture not by superimposing or erasing its memory, but by endowing it with new potential and a new lease of life. It is one of the largest permanent artistic interventions the artist has ever tackled: the silos occupy 750 square meters covering a total length of 75 meters, while each has a façade of 100 square meters, standing 11.3 meters in height. The palette of colors was selected by the artist on the basis of a specific study of the area where the work is set.

The exhibition Another Step, curated by Marina Dacci, is an all-round homage to Tremlett’s lifelong research. It features some seventy works—drawings, collages, and textual compositions—stretching from 1969 to 2023, more than half of which have never been exhibited, as it is largely focused on his studio work. With temporal crossovers to be found in every room, the exhibition is laid out following certain lines of the artist’s research, demonstrating its coherent development and continuity over time. In particular: his outlook as a seasoned traveler; the pleasure of discovery as measured by his own physical advancement, creating personal mappings and the reinvention of places; his relationship with architecture and its visionary reinterpretation, turning them into abstract and sound landscapes where the movement of the body and gaze are understood as part the artist’s sculptural attitude; his relationship with language seen as a framework for his works, sometimes in the form of alphabets, sometimes of short poems composed on the basis of free association; his relationship with space viewed as an expression of sound that runs through all his works; and lastly his close relationship with Italy over the years. The exhibition is further complemented by a selection of artist’s books and Tremlett’s permanent intervention (titled Interno) staged in the ancient Benedictine building. Also on display are the preparatory sketches for the permanent work The Organ Pipes as well as a video on the process of its creation and other documentation material concerning the artist’s work. The book, published by Gli Ori in Italian and English, documents both the permanent installation and the exhibition with texts by Marina Dacci and Luca Massimo Barbero, creating a path for the interpretation and exploration of Tremlett’s poetics and his own modus operandi.