Luciano Bertoli. Frattempo. Le curve di Mandelbrot

The Mandelbrot set, named after the Polish physicist who discovered fractals, is a set of complex numbers, outlined graphically in 1984 and popularised by a cover of the well-known popularisation magazine Scientific American. Bertoli quickly grasped the aesthetic potential of this complex mathematical object, however, leaving aside any attempt at reproduction, he instead constructed a new universe of images inspired by it, yet with a predominantly organic and tactile matrix.

My images, wrote Luciano Bertoli, are the result of pure intuition, of mathematical auscultation, invented by a visionary who loves quantum physics, visualising what can only be intuited, imagined, i.e. the origin of the universe of Niels Bohr and Max Planck’s quantum mechanics. Aesthetically, I emphasise colouristics, vibrations, spatiality, everything that remains unexplored except by the mind’s eye.

The exhibition is enhanced by a rich section dedicated to works of the previous period – paintings, sculptures, graphics, drawings and assemblages – so as to provide the public with the essential components of an experimental path in materials and techniques, underpinned by a genuine curiosity for the world of machinery and technology, the protagonists of the society he lived in and of other possible, futuristic, science-fiction civilisations.

In the ’70s and ’80s, the artist worked on hibernating landscapes, self-generating constructions, mechanical animals, metallic eroticism, plasticised and electric ideal cities, installations and sculptures, as well as folders of drawings and graphics characterised by technical perfection and attention to detail. The same care that the artist reserves for the sketches: rather than sketches, they are genuine engineering projects, functional to the mechanisation of his sculptures, many of which are designed to be placed outdoors.

Combining magic and media, Julius Verne’s fantastical spirit and the rigorous approach of an engineer, over fifty years of research Luciano Bertoli managed to grasp aspects of surgery and computer science, cybernetics and medicine that were not even conceivable at the time, making art – as the curator concludes – “an instrument used so as to be in time, in one’s own time, as a bridge to project intuition and intelligence towards the world, the universe and its laws.”

A catalogue published by Silvana Editoriale with a critical text by Martina Corgnati accompanies the exhibition.