An archive of sounds for interspecies communication, stemming from Renato Leotta's research on Posidonia Oceanica, an underwater plant endemic to the Mediterranean Sea.
Ondina is an artist edition inclusive of vinyl record, containing an archive of sounds for interspecies communication. Part of the art project Concertino per il mare, the work stems from Renato Leotta's research on Posidonia Oceanica, an underwater plant endemic to the Mediterranean Sea. The artist had the intuition that the language of signs—spots and veins—on the surface of Posidonia leaves could be translated into music. Thus, transcribing these signs as notes arranged on a musical score, Leotta composed a story of the Mediterranean through sound, through the song of Posidonia Oceanica.
Together with the vinyl, the artist edition includes a 48 pages booklet with essays by curators Marcella Beccaria, Marianna Vecellio, and Sofia Gotti introducing and exploring Leotta's art research.
Published on the occasion of the exhibition Concertino per il mare at Castello di Rivoli in 2023-2024.
Renato Leotta (born 1982 in Turin) lives and works between Syracuse and Turin. In 2019 he was Italian Fellow in Visual Arts at the American Academy in Rome. Winner of the 10th edition of the Italian Council, international program to support Italian contemporary art, in 2022 he participated with the winning project in the 17th Istanbul Biennial.
Renato Leotta is drawn to the natural phenomena, the moon, the stars, the ocean, tides, and plants, all of which are the most prevalent components of Romantic poetry, regularly deployed to metaphorical, allegorical, and 'objective correlative' effects. Leotta's works are acts of observation, due to the use of the landscape as a subject. As an archaeologist of the Real, Leotta tries, through his process of observation, to identify and circumscribe a series of images, visualised through different media, that although being related to a specific time and space, contain a universal character. Moreover, by presenting the viewer with images that do not centre on narration, he works around and resists the limitations of cliché.
