Project Info
Giordano Bruno uses love poetry in order to speak about the philosophical quest and the strive to understand the universe.
As in love – which is a dynamic condition – so in the search for truth, the utter gain of the object of desire is never fully accomplished.
In the universe, there are infinite worlds and innumerable stars. We desperately try to grasp and fathom the totality of all things, ushered
by an insatiable need to understand that which can never be defined completely. The Infinite, being infinite, must be infinitely pursued.
Within an infinite space we can define no center, in temrs of geometry. Thus, the center of the universe could be each small or bigger
part, or the person who can perceive him/her self as a small part of this infinite space.
To understand the universe is to be mirrored and transformed.
To contemplate the infinite means, in particular, to think of oneself as a tiny part of a Whole; it means to enthusiastically demonstrate
the certainty that one’s life too participates, in proportion, in the incessant movement of the Universe.
(Nuccio Ordine, La soglia dell’ombra: Letteratura, filosofia e pittura in Giordano Bruno, Venice, Marsilio Editori, 2003, p. 225)
The largescale mosaic is inspired by the roman black and white mosaics of Ostia Antica and by the monography of J. R. Clarke Figural
Black and White Mosaics where he argues that pavement mosaics functioned as fundamental elements of the architectural space
addressing viewers kinesthetic perception. The mosaic has been sanded and it is presented here, as a huge mirror inviting the viewer
to mirror and to perceive him/her self as a smal part of this infinite space.
*Italian philosopher, poet, mathematician, and astronomer Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) defended the existence of an infinite universe with innumerable stars. He
was sentenced to be burned to death by the Inquisition, in order to gratify the ecclesiastical perspective that sought the prevailing of the geocentric cosmologic
model.