Marco Giordano ‘To Disturb Somnolent Birds’

To Disturb Somnolent Birds, 2020, Perspex table, 19 resin and pigment sculpture with LED strip, WiFI controller, electronic, components, Jesmonite buckets with speakers, looped soundtrack, wooden bench, Overall dimensions: 120 x 240 x 93 cm
Marco Giordano
The Modern Institute, Aird's Lane Bricks Space
01/02/2020—04/04/2020
  • To Disturb Somnolent Birds, 2020, Perspex table, 19 resin and pigment sculpture with LED strip, WiFi controller, electronic components, Jesmonite buckets with speakers, looped soundtrack, wooden bench, Overall dimensions: 120 x 240 x 93 cm
  • To Disturb Somnolent Birds, 2020, Perspex table, 19 resin and pigment sculpture with LED strip, WiFi controller, electronic components, Jesmonite buckets with speakers, looped soundtrack, wooden bench, Overall dimensions: 120 x 240 x 93 cm
  • To Disturb Somnolent Birds, 2020, Perspex table, 19 resin and pigment sculpture with LED strip, WiFi controller, electronic components, Jesmonite buckets with speakers, looped soundtrack, wooden bench, Overall dimensions: 120 x 240 x 93 cm
  • Soporific, 2020, Resin, pigment, LED, perspex, Sculpture: 44.5 x 9 x 8 cm, Plinth: 30 x 30 x 30 cm
  • Snoozy Beak, 2020, Resin, pigment, LED, perspex, Sculpture: 21.5 x 20 x 17 cm, Plinth: 30 x 30 x 30 cm
  • Perplex Shake, 2020, Resin, pigment, LED, perspex, Sculpture: 40 x 15 x 14 cm, Plinth: 30 x 30 x 30 cm
  • Slow Yellow, 2020, Resin, pigment, LED, perspex, Sculpture: 38 x 14 x 8.5 cm, Plinth: 30 x 30 x 30 cm
  • Swollen Red, 2020, Resin, pigment, LED, perspex, Sculpture: 35 x 21 x 21 cm, Plinth: 30 x 30 x 30 cm
  • Somnolent, 2020, Resin, pigment, LED, perspex, Sculpture: 30 x 26 x 16 cm, Plinth: 30 x 30 x 30 cm
  • Sleepy Duck, 2020, Resin, piment, LED, perspex, Sculpture: 15 x 30 x 14 cm, Plinth: 30 x 30 x 30 cm
  • Torpid Eyes, 2020, Resin, pigment, LED, perspex, Sculpture: 26 x 16 x 12 cm, Plinth: 30 x 30 x 30 cm
  • Drowsy Hug, 2020, Resin, pigment, LED, perspex, Sculpture: 27 x 20 x 16 cm, Plinth: 30 x 30 x 30 cm
  • Agitate Stone, 2020, Resin, pigment, LED, perspex, Sculpture: 31 x 13 x 11 cm, Plinth: 30 x 30 x 30 cm
  • Video

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Marking his first solo-exhibition at The Modern Institute, Glasgow-based artist Marco Giordano presents ‘To Disturb Somnolent Birds’, a new installation that focuses on his on-going interest in hypnagogia – the lucid phenomena experienced within the brief transitional state between wakefulness and sleep. Utilising the unique atmosphere of the gallery’s Bricks Space, Giordano seeks to stimulate the visual, tactile, auditory and other sensory hallucinations that occur at the threshold of consciousness.

Centrally, a series of resin sculptures are displayed atop a replica of the improvised work bench in Giordano’s studio, where the bird-like forms rotocast in coloured resin from clay models, studio ephemera and organic materials, pulsate with fluctuating light, illuminating the darkened space. Reminiscent of night-lights, the distorted silhouettes warp in and out of focus as if drowsy with the onset of sleep.

Produced in collaboration with composer Alessio Dutto and vocalist Andrea Silvia Giordano, the artist has written an accompanying lullaby combining the human voice and electronic sounds. Played through speakers installed within the cast buckets on which his working surface is raised, the entire structure reverberates with ambient sound.

From Federico García Lorca’s lecture, ‘On Lullabies’, 1928, Giordano derives both the exhibition’s title and a reference point for a body of work that desires not to delineate nor define, but suggest and stimulate, imagining and animating the liminal space space between the corporeal experiences of waking life and mental wilderness of sleep.

Accompanying Giordano’s exhibition is an essay by Glasgow-based writer, Ari Níelsson.

Marco Giordano (b. 1988 in Turin; lives and works in Glasgow)

Selected solo exhibitions include: ‘My Mouth in your Mind’, Frutta, Rome (2019); ‘Lo sono nessuno! Tu come stai?’, Art Verona, Verona (2018); ‘Conjunctive Tissue’, curated by Giulia Colletti, KaOZ (Manifesta 12 Collateral Event), Palermo (2018); ‘I’m Nobody! How Are You?’, Glasgow International Festival (2018); ‘Conjunctive Tissue’, Lily Brooke, London (2018); ‘Conjunctive Tissue’, curated by Giulia Colletti, Civic Room, Glasgow (2017); ‘Pathetic Fallacy, Il Colorficio, Milan (2017); ‘Self-fulfilling Ego, Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh (2017); ‘CUTIS’, Glasgow Project Room (2017); ‘Asnatureintended’, Frutta, Rome (2016) and ‘Marco Giordano/Gabriella Boyd, Glasgow International (2016).

Recent group exhibitions include: ‘Savage’, Otto Zoo Gallery, Milan (2019); ‘Teatrum Botanicum’, Parco Arte Vivente, Turin (2019); ‘Living in imagination’, Galeria Wozownia, Torun (2019); ‘Flashing and flashing’, Maxxi, Rome (2019); ‘Open Out’, Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh (2019); ‘Group Show’, Frutta, Rome (2018); ‘Torre Maluttona’, Monitor, Rome (2018); ‘That’s IT!’, Sull’Ultima Generazione di Artisti in Italia e a un Metro e Ottanta dal Confine, Curated by Lorenzo Balbi, Bologna (2018); ‘HO HO HO, a Project by Alek O., Gabriele De Santis, Santo Tolone and Spring’, Frutta, Rome (2017); ‘I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream For Ice Cream’, Curated by Clelia Colantonio, Fondazione Baruchello, Rome (2017) and ‘The Gap Between the Fridge and the Cooker’, The Modern Institute, Glasgow (2017).