Meris Angioletti’s explorations have their roots in both the history of the arts – from the first abstractions of the late 19th century to the “expanded cinema” of the 1970s – and the cognitive sciences, psychology and esoteric beliefs. Her highly analytical methodology combines image and textual references with personal writings in works that speculate about the mechanisms of perception, memory and the psyche.

For La Galerie Angioletti has opted for a two-level presentation. On the ground floor a group of recent works (2009–2011) echoes a “sub-exhibition” comprising a soundtrack and a sculpture, both created specifically for the occasion. Fascinated by experiments involving different states of consciousness – mediumistic, hypnotic and telepathic visions – the artist envelops the gallery with light projections, colours and voices, using these stimuli to link physical to mental space.

The key to the exhibition is the video Il Paradigma Indiziario (“The Circumstantial Paradigm”), with its parallel between the subterranean passageways of a city and the unconscious territory of memory. Here the parallel is expanded to fill the entire space. In what used to be La Galerie’s cellar a recording of a chorus functions as a commentary on what is taking place at the same moment on the ground floor. This enigmatic vocal music comprises samples of imaginary languages taken by the artist from the history of literature.

Angioletti’s interest in languages in their latent state is to be found in many of her works, in the form of dialogues, footnotes and hypertext. Silently observing these ongoing investigations, a sculpture inspired by the earliest forms of writing appears only at the end of the exhibition.

Central to Angioletti’s agenda is the question of translation: not just as the subject of some of her works – the translation of the number π into movement, for example – but most importantly as a structure for thought. Like the creative process and its translation of the imagination into a verbal, sound or other language, each work is an attempt at giving concrete form to sometimes inexplicable psychic processes like intuition, the free association of ideas and the shaping of mental images: an approach that brings new life to our thinking about the connections between what is visible and what remains imperceptible; between what is fully conscious and what is less so.

Marianne Lanavère

Translated by John Tittensor