A metaphysical poem divided into 21 chapters inspired by a series of researches performed among Iran, Armenia, and Ethiopia.
Built through the interlace of biographies, scientific theories, mythologies and experiences, the story tells the creation and collapse of a Carpet warped with a sound-light yarn, originated by the sacrifice of a Primordial Taurus forced to gallop inside a particle accelerator in whose texture geometry, architecture and mirages of consciousness come to life. The carpet is a ritual cartography crossed by a solitary figure who, following a guiding river, embarks on a dissolutive journey between psyche and landscape in search of the voice that first sang the infinite creative act operating within the limits of space, time and metamorphosis of forms.
The narration is built by a chain of intuitions that came into view during the travels led the investigations: I followed a fil rouge that brought me to discover and explore a manifold of stories, places, and characters: the philosophy of light in the works of Persian mystics: Shoreward, Attar, Saadi and Gialal ad Din Rumi - the man in love with the atom. I came to discover Dasht-e Lut, the hottest desert in the world, formed by numberless geomorphological structures that resemble the last vestiges of a sand empire in dissolution; the Girih pattern in medieval Islamic architecture that enabled the creation of the most complex periodic tasselation which in turn constructed almost perfect and quasi-crystalline Penrose patterns, five centuries before their discovery in the West; the Hormoz Islands in Persian Gulf, considered a "geologist's paradise", the place where the enigmatic Zaar tribe dwells; the profound influence of Zoroaster and the simulacre of perennial fire in the origins of monotheistic cultures; the carpet weaving ritual linked to the destiny of men among the nomadic desert populations; the lunar utopia of Alexander the Great's conquest; the petrified knowledge that shapes the monastery complex of Sanahin and Haghpat in Armenia; the ruins of Ani, where Gurdjieff claimed to have found an ancient teaching upon which he built his theories and brought him to Ethiopia in search of Sarmoung Brotherhood; the intriguing story of the Nile's source identified by James Bruce in the Tana Lake in the late IX century; the Tigray monasteries, carved into rock as an architectural geodes, whose priests keep the Tabot, the relics of the Ark of the Covenant.
Riccardo Arena (born 1979 in Milan) is an artist, researcher and teacher, whose practice is oriented to investigate the philosophical and symbolic contents of images through the creation of visual reflections conceived as poetic formalizations of a research devoted to admiring the plot of significant correspondences that link forms, phenomena, topographies and mirages of consciousness.
By exploring the analogies between interdisciplinary territories and integrating multiple languages and expressive techniques his praxis is devoted to the construction of visual and narrative imagery. Ecosystems of abstract forces that by combining and harmonizing theoretical and formal research, pose as cultural devices of imaginative knowledge.
Over the years, he has dedicated himself to the development of long-term independent projects in different countries, whose poetics and contents are defined through an intuitive study, connection and intertwining path that occurs during the travel experience.
During this process, the continuous movement between the stratification of archival materials and their intuitive reconfiguration, is condensed into diagrams and mental maps that act as a basis and guide for the elaboration of fictional narratives expressed through installations, films, drawings, prints, books, stories, seminars and workshops. A constellation of languages in mutual dialogue, orchestrated in a field of vision aimed at contemplating the metaphysical and universal components that tie stories, cultures, theories and myths distant in time and geographies.
