Alessandra Tesi

Alessandra Tesi

(Bologna, 1969)

The work Interference Pearl, 1999, was created in reference to the history of Castello di Rivoli, which is unique, both because of the grandeur of the project conceived by Filippo Juvarra in 1718 and because it is unfinished: the construction site was interrupted in 1734 due to economic and political difficulties, after only one-third of the structure had been built.
Alessandra Tesi has made this peculiarity the protagonist of her work, especially the void that separates the two buildings of the former Savoy Residence, where one can grasp the sense of a project that remained incomplete, between the construction of the Castle in the making and the partial demolition of the Manica Lunga (Long Sleeve). The plan that separates the Castello from the Manica Lunga, says the artist, is the design of the point at which desire stopped…the drawing of an absence.
Indeed, Tesi works starting from the layout marking the position of walls and pillars designed by Juvarra and never built, a layout that is clearly visible today on the exterior pavement, thanks to Andrea Bruno’s restoration. These foundations were to support the most significant parts of the Castle: the entrance hall and the grand main hall.
Alessandra Tesi projected the design of that tracing onto the vault of the room in which she created the work, which overlooks the outside and then the atrium with a large window. Entering Interference Pearl is like entering a private space, where desires run simultaneously in different directions. The iridescent paint that covers the entire vault and walls is crisscrossed by the grid of the drawing related to the never-built architecture, deformed and rendered by means of acrylic colors called “interferences”, changing depending on the angle of refraction of the light and depending on the movement of viewers walking through the space.

Read more about the architecture of the Castle in the video storytelling in IS “Welcome to Castello di Rivoli” https://www.castellodirivoli.org/en/videoguida/welcome-to-castello-di-rivoli/